Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Page 24

  "Well, she sat back for a minute, and then she smiled. Her smile was like sunshine, and it eased me a little. 'I didn't mean to scare you, honey,' she said. 'That wasn't none of what I had in my mind at all. It's just that I got the sight, and sometime it's strong. I'll just brew us a cup of tea, and that'll calm you down. You'll like it. It's special to me.'

  "I wanted to tell her I didn't want any tea, but it seemed like I couldn't. Seemed like too much of an effort to open my mouth, and all the strength had gone out of my legs.

  "She had a greasy little kitchenette that was almost as dark as a cave. I sat in the chair by the door and watched her spoon loose tea into an old chipped china pot and put a kettle on the gas ring. I sat there thinking I didn't want anything that was special to her, nor anything that came out of that greasy little kitchenette either. I was thinking I'd take just a little sip to be mannerly and then get my ass out of there as fast as I could and never come back.

  "But then she brought over two little china cups just as clean as snow and a tray with sugar and cream and fresh-baked bread-rolls. She poured the tea and it smelled good and hot and strong. It kind of waked me up and before I knew it I'd drunk two cups and eaten one of the bread-rolls, too.

  "She drank a cup and ate a roll and we got talking along on more natural subjects--who we knew on the street, whereabouts in Alabama I came from, where I liked to shop, and all that. Then I looked at my watch and seen over an hour and a half had gone by. I started to get up and a dizzy feeling ran through me and I plopped right back in my chair again."

  Darcy was looking at her, eyes round.

  " 'You doped me,' I said, and I was scared, but the scared part of me was way down inside.

  " 'Girl, I want to help you,' she said, 'but you don't want to give up what I need to know and I know damn well you ain't gonna do what you need to do even once you do give it up--not without a push. So I fixed her. You gonna take a little nap, is all, but before you do you're gonna tell me the name of your babe's natural father.'

  "And, sitting there in that chair with its saggy cane bottom and hearing all of uptown roaring and racketing just outside her living-room window, I saw him as clear as I'm seeing you now, Darcy. His name was Peter Jefferies, and he was just as white as I am black, just as tall as I am short, just as educated as I am ignorant. We were as different as two people could be except for one thing--we both come from Alabama, me from Babylon down in the toolies by the Florida state line, him from Birmingham. He didn't even know I was alive--I was just the nigger woman who cleaned the suite where he always stayed on the eleventh floor of this hotel. And as for me, I only thought of him to stay out of his way because I'd heard him talk and seen him operate and I knew well enough what sort of man he was. It wasn't just that he wouldn't use a glass a black person had used before him without it had been washed; I've seen too much of that in my time to get worked up about it. It was that once you got past a certain point in that man's character, white and black didn't have anything to do with what he was. He belonged to the son-of-a-bitch tribe, and that particular bunch comes in all skin-colors.

  "You know what? He was like Johnny in a lot of ways, or the way Johnny would have been if he'd been smart and had an education and if God had thought to give Johnny a great big slug of talent inside of him instead of just a head for dope and a nose for wet pussy.

  "I thought nothing of him but to steer clear of him, nothing at all. But when Mama Delorme leaned over me, so close I felt like the smell of cinnamon comin out of her pores was gonna suffocate me, it was his name that came out with never a pause. 'Peter Jefferies,' I said. 'Peter Jefferies, the man who stays in 1163 when he ain't writing his books down there in Alabama. He's the natural father. But he's white! '

  "She leaned closer and said, 'No he ain't, honey. No man's white. Inside where they live, they's all black. You don't believe it, but that's true. It's midnight inside em all, any hour of God's day. But a man can make light out of night, and that's why what comes out of a man to make a baby in a woman is white. Natural got nothing to do with color. Now you close your eyes, honey, because you tired--you so tired. Now! Say! Now! Don't you fight! Mama Delorme ain't goan put nothin over on you, child! Just got somethin I goan to put in your hand. Now--no, don't look, just close your hand over it.' I did what she said and felt something square. Felt like glass or plastic.

  " 'You gonna remember everythin when it's time for you to remember. For now, just go on to sleep. Shhh . . . go to sleep. . . shhh. . . .'

  "And that's just what I did," Martha said. "Next thing I remember, I was running down those stairs like the devil was after me. I didn't remember what I was running from, but that didn't make any difference; I ran anyway. I only went back there one more time, and I didn't see her when I did."

  Martha paused and they both looked around like women freshly awakened from a shared dream. Le Cinq had begun to fill up--it was almost five o'clock and executives were drifting in for their after-work drinks. Although neither wanted to say so out loud, both suddenly wanted to be somewhere else. They were no longer wearing their uniforms but neither felt she belonged among these men with their briefcases and their talk of stocks, bonds, and debentures.

  "I've got a casserole and a six-pack at my place," Martha said, suddenly timid. "I could warm up the one and cool down the other . . . if you want to hear the rest."

  "Honey, I think I got to hear the rest," Darcy said, and laughed a little nervously.

  "And I think I've got to tell it," Martha replied, but she did not laugh. Or even smile.

  "Just let me call my husband. Tell him I'll be late."

  "You do that," Martha said, and while Darcy used the telephone, Martha checked in her bag one more time just to make sure the precious book was still there.

  *

  The casserole--as much of it as the two of them could use, anyway--was eaten, and they had each had a beer. Martha asked Darcy again if she was sure she wanted to hear the rest. Darcy said she did.

  "Because some of it ain't very nice. I got to be up front with you about that. Some of it's worse'n the sort of magazines the single men leave behind em when they check out."

  Darcy knew the sort of magazines she meant, but could not imagine her trim, clean little friend in connection with any of the things pictured in them. She got them each a fresh beer, and Martha began to speak again.

  *

  "I was back home before I woke up all the way, and because I couldn't remember hardly any of what had gone on at Mama Delorme's, I decided the best thing--the safest thing--was to believe it had all been a dream. But the powder I'd taken from Johnny's bottle wasn't a dream; it was still in my dress pocket, wrapped up in the cellophane from the cigarette pack. All I wanted to do right then was get rid of it, and never mind all the bruja in the world. Maybe I didn't make a business of going through Johnny's pockets, but he surely made a business of going through mine, 'case I was holding back a dollar or two he might want.

  "But that wasn't all I found in my pocket--there was something else, too. I took it out and looked at it and then I knew for sure I'd seen her, although I still couldn't remember much of what had passed between us.

  "It was a little square plastic box with a top you could see through and open. There wasn't nothing in it but an old dried-up mushroom--except after hearing what 'Tavia had said about that woman, I thought maybe it might be a toadstool instead of a mushroom, and probably one that would give you the night-gripes so bad you'd wish it had just killed you outright like some of em do.

  "I decided to flush it down the commode along with that powder he'd been sniffing up his nose, but when it came right down to it, I couldn't. Felt like she was right there in the room with me, telling me not to. I was even scairt to look into the livin-room mirror, case I might see her standin behind me.

  "In the end, I dumped the little bit of powder I'd taken down the kitchen sink, and I put the little plastic box in the cabinet over the sink. I stood on tiptoe and pushed it in as far as I cou
ld--all the way to the back, I guess. Where I forgot all about it."

  *

  She stopped for a moment, drumming her fingers nervously on the table, and then said, "I guess I ought to tell you a little more about Peter Jefferies. My Pete's novel is about Viet Nam and what he knew of the Army from his own hitch; Peter Jefferies's books were about what he always called Big Two, when he was drunk and partying with his friends. He wrote the first one while he was still in the service, and it was published in 1946. It was called Blaze of Heaven."

  Darcy looked at her for a long time without speaking and then said, "Is that so?"

  "Yes. Maybe you see where I'm going now. Maybe you get a little more what I mean about natural fathers. Blaze of Heaven, Blaze of Glory."

  "But if your Pete had read this Mr. Jefferies's book, isn't it possible that--"

  "Course it's possible," Martha said, making that pshaw gesture herself this time, "but that ain't what happened. I ain't going to try and convince you of that, though. You'll either be convinced when I get done or you won't. I just wanted to tell you about the man, a little."

  "Go to it," Darcy said.

  "I saw him pretty often from 1957 when I started working at Le Palais right through until 1968 or so, when he got in trouble with his heart and liver. The way the man drank and carried on, I was only surprised he didn't get in trouble with himself earlier on. He was only in half a dozen times in 1969, and I remember how bad he looked--he was never fat, but he'd lost enough weight by then so he wasn't no more than a stuffed string. Went right on drinking, though, yellow face or not. I'd hear him coughing and puking in the bathroom and sometimes crying with the pain and I'd think, Well, that's it; that's all; he's got to see what he's doing to himself; he'll quit now. But he never. In 1970 he was only in twice. He had a man with him that he leaned on and who took care of him. He was still drinking, too, although anybody who took even half a glance at him knew he had no business doing it.

  "The last time he came was in February of 1971. It was a different man he had with him, though; I guess the first one must have played out. Jefferies was in a wheelchair by then. When I come in to clean and looked in the bathroom, I seen what was hung up to dry on the shower-curtain rail--continence pants. He'd been a handsome man, but those days were long gone. The last few times I saw him, he just looked raddled. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

  Darcy nodded. You saw such creatures creeping down the street sometimes, with their brown bags under their arms or tucked into their shabby old coats.

  "He always stayed in 1163, one of those corner suites with the view that looks toward the Chrysler Building, and I always used to do for him. After awhile, it got so's he would even call me by name, but it didn't really signify--I wore a name-tag and he could read, that was all. I don't believe he ever once really saw me. Until 1960 he always left two dollars on top of the television when he checked out. Then, until '64, it was three. At the very end it was five. Those were very good tips for those days, but he wasn't really tipping me; he was following a custom. Custom's important for people like him. He tipped for the same reason he'd hold the door for a lady; for the same reason he no doubt used to put his milk-teeth under his pillow when he was a little fellow. Only difference was, I was the Cleanin Fairy instead of the Tooth Fairy.

  "He'd come in to talk to his publishers or sometimes movie and TV people, and he'd call up his friends--some of them were in publishing, too, others were agents or writers like him--and there'd be a party. Always a party. Most I just knew about by the messes I had to clean up the next day--dozens of empty bottles (mostly Jack Daniel's), millions of cigarette butts, wet towels in the sinks and the tub, leftover room service everywhere. Once I found a whole platter of jumbo shrimp turned into the toilet bowl. There were glass-rings on everything, and people snoring on the sofa and floors, like as not.

  "That was mostly, but sometimes there were parties still going on when I started to clean at ten-thirty in the morning. He'd let me in and I'd just kinda clean up around em. There weren't any women at those parties; those ones were strictly stag, and all they ever did was drink and talk about the war. How they got to the war. Who they knew in the war. Where they went in the war. Who got killed in the war. What they saw in the war they could never tell their wives about (although it was all right if a black maid happened to pick up on some of it). Sometimes--not too often--they'd play high-stakes poker as well, but they talked about the war even while they were betting and raising and bluffing and folding. Five or six men, their faces all flushed the way white men's faces get when they start really socking it down, sitting around a glass-topped table with their shirts open and their ties pulled way down, the table heaped with more money than a woman like me will make in a lifetime. And how they did talk about their war! They talked about it the way young women talk about their lovers and their boyfriends."

  Darcy said she was surprised the management hadn't kicked Jefferies out, famous writer or not--they were fairly stiff about such goings-on now and had been even worse in years gone by, or so she had heard.

  "No, no, no," Martha said, smiling a little. "You got the wrong impression. You're thinking the man and his friends carried on like one of those rock-groups that like to tear up their suites and throw the sofas out the windows. Jefferies wasn't no ordinary grunt, like my Pete; he'd been to West Point, went in a Lieutenant and came out a Major. He was quality, from one of those old Southern families who have a big house full of old paintings where everyone's ridin hosses and looking noble. He could tie his tie four different ways and he knew how to bend over a lady's hand when he kissed it. He was quality, I tell you."

  Martha's smile took on a little twist as she spoke the word; the twist had a look both bitter and derisive.

  "He and his friends sometimes got a little loud, I guess, but they rarely got rowdy--there's a difference, although it's hard to explain--and they never got out of control. If there was a complaint from the neighboring room--because it was a corner suite he stayed in, there was only the one--and someone from the front desk had to call Mr. Jefferies's room and ask him and his guests to tone it down a little, why, they always did. You understand?"

  "Yes."

  "And that's not all. A quality hotel can work for people like Mr. Jefferies. It can protect them. They can go right on partying and having a good time with their booze and their cards or maybe their drugs."

  "Did he take drugs?"

  "Hell, I don't know. He had plenty of them at the end, God knows, but they were all the kind with prescription labels on them. I'm just saying that quality--it's that white Southern gentleman's idea of quality I'm talking about now, you know--calls to quality. He'd been coming to Le Palais a long time, and you may think it was important to the management that he was a big famous author, but that's only because you haven't been at Le Palais as long as I have. Him being famous was important to them, but it was really just the icing on the cake. What was more important was that he'd been coming there a long time, and his father, who was a big landowner down around Porterville, had been a regular guest before him. The people who ran the hotel back then were people who believed in tradition. I know the ones who run it now say they believe in it, and maybe they do when it suits them, but in those days they really believed in it. When they knew Mr. Jefferies was coming up to New York on the Southern Flyer from Birmingham, you'd see the room right next to that corner suite sort of empty out, unless the hotel was full right up to the scuppers. They never charged him for the empty room next door; they were just trying to spare him the embarrassment of having to tell his cronies to keep it down to a dull roar."

  Darcy shook her head slowly. "That's amazing."

  "You don't believe it, honey?"

  "Oh yes--I believe it, but it's still amazing."

  That bitter, derisive smile resurfaced on Martha Rosewall's face. "Ain't nothing too much for quality . . . for that Robert E. Lee Stars and Bars charm . . . or didn't used to be. Hell, even I recognized that he was quality, n
o sort of a man to go hollering Yee-haw out the window or telling Rastus P. Coon jokes to his friends.

  "He hated blacks just the same, though, don't be thinking different . . . but remember what I said about him belonging to the son-of-a-bitch tribe? Fact was, when it came to hate, Peter Jefferies was an equal-opportunity employer. When John Kennedy died, Jefferies happened to be in the city and he threw a party. All of his friends were there, and it went on into the next day. I could barely stand to be in there, the things they were saying--about how things would be perfect if only someone would get that brother of his who wouldn't be happy until every decent white kid in the country was fucking while the Beatles played on the stereo and the colored (that's what they called black folks, mostly, 'the colored,' I used to hate that sissy, pantywaist way of saying so much) were running wild through the streets with a TV under each arm.

  "It got so bad that I knew I was going to scream at him. I just kept telling myself to be quiet and do my job and get out as fast as I could; I kept telling myself to remember the man was my Pete's natural father if I couldn't remember anything else; I kept telling myself that Pete was only three years old and I needed my job and I would lose it if I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

  "Then one of em said, 'And after we get Bobby, let's go get his candy-ass kid brother!' and one of the others said, 'Then we'll get all the male children and really have a party!'

  " 'That's right!' Mr. Jefferies said. 'And when we've got the last head up on the last castle wall we're going to have a party so big I'm going to hire Madison Square Garden!'

  "I had to leave then. I had a headache and belly-cramps from trying so hard to keep my mouth shut. I left the room half-cleaned, which is something I never did before nor have since, but sometimes being black has its advantages; he didn't know I was there, and he sure didn't know when I was gone. Wasn't none of them did."

  That bitter derisive smile was on her lips again.

  *

  "I don't see how you can call a man like that quality, even as a joke," Darcy said, "or call him the natural father of your unborn child, whatever the circumstances might have been. To me he sounds like a beast."