Harlem Redux (3 page)

Annie Williams’s wizened face lit up when she saw him. Her hands went to her cheeks and her dark eyes widened in surprise.

“Mr. David? Is it you? Is it really you?”

David gave a barely perceptible nod and the whisper of a smile. He sensed her astonishment melt into joy, momentarily eclipsing her grief, and felt the knot in his chest loosen. God, how he’d missed her. She’d been there as long as he could remember. His eyes went over her. She was ginger-brown, like her favorite spice, a thin, wiry woman of strength surprising in someone her size and age. She was in her late fifties. Most of the time, she appeared younger, but mourning for Lilian had taken its toll. Her eyes were sunken and ringed by circles of dark gray.

He wrapped his strong arms around her in a hug. Her soft breath buffeted his ears as she whispered gratitude to God for having answered her prayers. Finally, she stepped back, swiped at her tearful eyes with her apron, and took a good look at him.

“Where you been, Mr. David? We sure did miss you. Coulda used you ‘round here.”

“Movement business,” he said, glancing away.

“It was so horrible when you didn’t come back. We thought you was dead and gone. Nobody seemed to know nothing. Them Movement people even offered a reward. But they just gotta lot a kooks writing in. Nothing worthwhile. ‘Magine, Miss Lilian knowing where you was all the time. I ain’t faulting her for not saying nothing—I’m sure she had her reasons, but—”

He managed a small smile and forced himself to look at her. “I asked her to be discreet.”

“Well then, I guess I can’t say nothing—but it sure woulda lifted a coupla hearts to know you was all right.”

She ushered him into the house. Until that moment, he’d wondered if he would actually manage to set foot in it again, but with her to welcome him it wasn’t so difficult.

I’m acting like a child,
he thought.

And like a child, he let her ease off his coat. She brushed her hand over it and hung it in the vestibule closet.

“I was going through Miss Lilian’s things after the fun’ral. That’s when I found your address. I wish I’da known where you was before. Maybe it woulda made a diff’rence. Then again, maybe not. I just know I sure is glad you here. I’m so glad you come back.”

Her eyes went over him devotedly. It had been years since he’d seen so much love for him in anyone’s face. He walked into her arms. They held one another again and it was hard to tell who was comforting whom.

In her own way, Annie had helped raise him and his twin sisters, Lilian and Gem. She’d seen them through their first loves and first heartaches. She’d rejoiced with them when they won school prizes and comforted them when they lost. He knew that she was as proud of the McKay children as she would’ve been of her own. As she hugged him, her flat, spade-like hands patted him on the back.

Like I’m a child,
he thought.
And I’m glad of her comfort, like a child. All these years of living away, and the moment I return here, I’m—

“C’mon, Mr. David. Let me fix you something to eat.”

He nodded and followed her as she led him down the corridor. She moved with unfamiliar slowness, as though the weight of her years were bricks on her back. Her left shoulder was a tad bit higher than the other from a slight curvature of the spine he hadn’t noticed before, and she walked with a slightly perceptible limp. He did not remember her being so frail, so worn.

What else had changed? He cocked an ear. He didn’t know what he was listening for, but he knew what he heard:

Emptiness. No sounds of life, of love or laughter. Just a roaring emptiness that fills every nook and cranny. A hollow silence that echoes every thought, every heartbeat.

He looked around, at the paintings on the walls, the flower-bedecked tables that lined the hallway. All seemed familiar, yet remote. His eyes knew what to expect, but none of the sights seemed to touch his heart. He was detached and distant and it reassured him to feel that way.

This is like a place I only dreamed of.

But then his gaze fell on the dark gleaming door to the left of the library. This was the door that had guarded the heart of the house. This was the door that had haunted his childhood dreams and even now—

His breath caught; his shoulders rode up. He counted his steps and kept his eyes straight ahead. The hallway seemed to twist and lengthen. It was taking an eternity to cross that door. Every footfall echoed in the thudding of his heartbeat. Finally, they were past the door, beyond it. The hallway snapped back into shape. He exhaled.

They entered the kitchen. It was warm and comforting, familiar in its rich mixture of smells. His joints were stiff after the long train ride. He eased himself down into a chair at the kitchen table and let his tired eyes drift over the spotless room: up to the clock on the wall, down to the gas stove, the enameled sink and the refrigerator. His breathing slowed.

How many meals have been prepared in here . ..

This kitchen was Annie’s domain. She’d made it her own, made it a place for more than just physical nourishment. Annie’s kitchen was a source of warmth, a place for truthful conversations. It was a place to break down and weep or bust out with a big laugh, to be temporarily free from concern about what was or was not becoming in a colored family of status. Never before had he been so intensely aware of the role Annie’s kitchen had played in his life. Never before had he so envied the boy he’d been.

She moved about the room, singing softly to herself. He watched her go about boiling water and heating something in a pot on the stove. Nothing more was said as the contents of the pot simmered. In a short time, she placed a cup of black coffee and a deep bowl of rich vegetable soup before him. She went to the pantry and fetched him bread and butter. He ate in silence. For a while, the only sound was the clink of his spoon scraping against the side of his bowl.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table across from him. He felt her eyes dwell on him with affection. He could imagine what she thought she saw: a good man possessed of a kind and compassionate nature, a man who performed brave deeds. He could imagine her talking to her friends. He could just hear her describing how it was before he went away.

“Always so nicely dressed in his debonair British suits. Never a hair outta place, shirts perfectly pressed, razor-sharp crease in his pants, black shoes so shiny you could see your face in them. ‘Fine David McKay,’ the young ladies used to call him. Them girls was crazy about my David, with his soft hair. But David never had no time for any of them. He was too busy studying. Wanted to be a lawyer. That’s what he done, too. After he come back from the war, he went off to Howard University and got hisself a fine education. Then he got a job with the Movement. They sent him on down south. He went to get to the truth behind them lynchings. It’s dang’rous work, going down to them there hot spots. Those ol’ crackers would just as soon lynch a colored man as look at him. That was back in ‘22. There sure was a lot to keep a colored lawyer busy back then. Still is. Sad to say, there still is.”

David thought about a little town in Georgia and his brief sense of well-being vanished. A chill touched his soul. He’d virtually disappeared after joining the Movement. He had kept his whereabouts secret from all but Lilian. He looked at Annie. Had she read his letters? No, it wasn’t likely. She was inquisitive, but she could be trusted to respect private matters. Furthermore, he’d been careful to keep his letters lean.

Finishing his soup, he laid his spoon and napkin neatly to one side. Silence permeated the room, thick and waiting. His mind was filled with questions. So many questions. They mobbed his mind like grief-stricken relatives clamoring around an accident scene, all seeking the impossible, the essentially unattainable—an explanation, an answer, a satisfying solution to that one question survivors are always driven to ask: Why?

“What happened?” he asked. “What brought her down?”

Annie wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. It was old and chipped. He realized with a start that the cup was the one he’d given her as a Christmas present when he was ten years old. He’d spent all of his first allowance on it.

“I don’t know if I can give you the answers you need, Mr. David. I seen a lot in this house, and I got my thoughts. But they’s just the notions of an old woman.”

He’d never known her to lie or bite her tongue when the truth needed telling. “It’s me, Annie. Whatever you want to say, however you want to say it, just go ahead.”

She looked away, out the window, where a couple walked past pushing a baby carriage. The young husband said something and his wife gave a high-pitched giggle. Inside the kitchen, it was quiet, so quiet that David could hear the sound of his own breathing. He waited. He could be patient. As a lawyer, he’d learned to be patient. Her eyes swung back to his.
Do you really want to know?
she seemed to ask.

Yes,
he thought.
I want to know.
“I need to know,” he said.

Her roughened hands trembled. “Well... a lot’s done happened since you been gone, Mr. David ... an awful lot.” Her words pierced him.

“Go on,” he whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse and tight and unwilling.

“I don’t know where to start. It’s hard when I think back on all I seen and heard.” Her voice trailed off. “Miss Gem come back for a while—”

“ Gem
is here?”

“No, she gone. Been gone. She didn’t stay long. Just long enough to try to cause trouble.” An expression of disapproval flitted across her face. “Anyway, she left again after a few months. And ain’t nobody heard nothing from her since Miss Lilian died.”

“Does she know?”

“She should. I sent a telegram. She never sent no answer. Never showed her face. I don’t know what to make of it. Nobody does.”

He had his own opinions on the matter, but he kept them to himself. “Go on.”

“Well, that young Miss Rachel—you know she was gone for a while— well, she come back, too.”

His heart gave a little twist. He kept his face unmoved.

“And then ... as for Miss Lilian ...” Annie paused.

“Yes?”

“She got ill. Her mind went. And ain’t none of the doctors knowed how to help her.” Annie folded her hands together. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. The biggest change, the one I’d better begin with, is how Miss Lilian up and got married.”

David’s eyelids raised involuntarily, then lowered like shutters yanked down over a dark window.
Married.
He shivered and wondered at his own reaction. Surely news of a marriage was to be welcomed.

It was also to be shared.

Why didn’t she tell me? She never once wrote a word about it, not even dropped a hint. All those letters of pretended openness. By saying nothing, she lied.

He was suddenly furious. And instantly ashamed. How could he be angry with the dead?

“I wondered if she’d written and told you,” Annie said. “Didn’t think she had. She didn’t tell nobody.”

“You mean she eloped?”

“It’ll be exactly two years ago next month. She kissed him in March, married him in April. Knowed him for one month. Met him at a fancy-dress dinner them civil rights folks at
Black Arrow
magazine had down at the Civic Club. You musta heard about it.”

Yes ...
The dinner had caused a lot of talk. It was widely written about in the Negro press. The dinner introduced the cream of Harlem’s black literary

crop to influential white publishers. It was held at the Civic Club because the Fifth Avenue restaurant was the only classy New York club that admitted patrons regardless of color or gender. It was the perfect meeting place for distinguished black intellectuals and eminent white liberals. As a writer and editor at the Black Arrow, Lilian would have been there.