Tina Mcelroy Ansa (5 page)

The thought of those two handsome healthy people gone, burned to nothing in the holocaust of a plane crash, began to sadden her so that she turned quickly to the front door of the juke joint. She needed a quick shot of assurance that some things on this earth remained the same.

But as soon as she had turned, she stopped at the entrance to The Place, sensing something awry. Seeing the empty spot on the sidewalk in front of The Place, Lena realized that she missed the covey of seven or eight of her “children”—teenaged boys and girls, the first ones to show up in the morning, gofers who hung around off and on all day and throughout the night waiting for a chore or an opportunity or a friend to appear. Lena’s “children” were the next generation of her mother’s “boys.”

When Nellie had opened up and run The Place during Lena’s
childhood, her mother had always referred to her helpers as her “boys.” Short Arm and Yakkity-Yak and Dear One and Rat-Face from Tybee and Shine. Some of them, old men now, were still around, happy and willing to do anything for Lena as long as they were able.

Lena’s children were male and female. They had names like Sharee and Jamal and Shan-tay and Javante and Chiquita, names they were given at birth, but just as many had names like Nellie’s boys: Def D and Boom-Boom and Fish and Junebug.

Throwaways, runaways, forgotten children of foster care and no care with eyes so old they might have seen the pyramids built. They were all just trying to catch a break. Lena would say that very thing at Jaycees meetings and civic luncheons and fund-raising dinners and anywhere else she thought it could help.

“If these kids could just catch a break …” she would lobby. But Lena was about the only break they caught.

They stood outside the door every morning but Sunday waiting for a safe haven to open up for them and hoping to see their benefactor.

In the seventies, they had greeted her with:

“Morning, Miss McPherson, Good morning, Miss Mac Morning, Miss Lena. Looking good this morning as usual.
Looking good?
Shit. Shake it but don’t break it. Morning, Lena, you looking good right along.” In the nineties with:

“What it is, Miss Lady? Miss Mac, how’s it hanging?” “Humph, Miss Mac got back!” “
Ooooo
, Miss Mac, let me borrow that suit.” “Looking good there, Lena.” And “Damn, girl!”

Sometimes one of them—usually little Chiquita—would sing a few stanzas of Salt ’n’ Pepa’s “Big Shot.”

The feeling over the years, however, was the same. Even with all their bravado, they couldn’t completely hide it. The need and loneliness and yearning would be so thick in the air some mornings, Lena felt she could barely move through it as she walked. It was all the young people—flashy-raggedy, mascara-dirty, fake-tough rusty hands and elbows and necks—could do to keep from running up to Lena and snuggling their heads of braids, fades, waves, shags, extensions and
curls up under her arms and breasts and chin as if she were their mother. And some cold winter mornings when there was ice at the edge of the Ocawatchee and in shallow ditches in lowlying neighborhoods like East Mulberry, it was all Lena—forty-five years old and childless—could do, too, to keep from calling them to her to cuddle up under the warmth and comfort of her luxurious fake fur or her shawl-collared black cashmere coat and suckle a little love.

She settled for planting a kiss on an occasional forehead, matching a young person every now and then with a good new home somewhere in the state, nearly single-handedly supporting any cause connected with the young folks and the homeless, and offering her little flock of street urchins hot drinks, juice, carbohydrates and fruit in the morning at the front of The Place. By the time regular customers began showing up, the morning refueling would be over and her children would have hit the street again.

Lena would see them throughout the day as she went about her business all over and around Mulberry. Their starter jackets ripped from a tussle, their gray sweatpants wet and muddy in the seat, their Nike Light Up the Night sneakers blinking red from behind in only one shoe. BLINK, blank, BLINK, blank, BLINK, blank. Like one hand clapping in the growing dark.

Lena blessed her children’s spot on the bare pavement and went on into her place.

“S
omething’s up,” Lena said quietly to herself, still standing at the door of The Place. She sounded like her best friend Sister when she entered any unfamiliar situation. She’d grab hold of Lena’s arm and say, “Something’s up. Hold on a minute.” Then Sister would scan the scene and try to figure out just what was a bit out of kilter before they entered.

Lena paused inside the glass plate door just long enough to sniff for the stale beer odor mingled with cigarette and cigar smoke that always lingered in the juke-joint air. She had loved that scent ever since she was a child opening up the downtown liquor store and grill on Saturdays with her mother. And Lena still loved it. It smelled unhealthy to most folks, but it reminded Lena of a party.

Lena didn’t smoke cigarettes. Her realty office complex was smoke-free
and
perfume-free. The charter that she and her original twelve employees drew up stipulated that. Everyone agreed that, even with the plant-filled atrium, there were too many women in the enclosed space to have conflicting scents. And she had suggested making
The Place smoke-free, too. But even the nonsmokers hadn’t had much enthusiasm for the plan.

But this morning Lena had to take two or three deep deep breaths before she could detect a whiff of the customary juke-joint air.

“Something’s up,” she said again.

She stopped at the door and called out, “Mr. Jackson! Mr. Jackson! It’s me. Lena.” There was no reply, and Lena went on in, locking the clear double plate-glass door behind her.

Before turning the last bedroom light out and climbing into bed the night before, she had put on her tortoiseshell reading glasses and pressed the blinking button on the black phone at her bedside to check the messages that came in while she was on another line. She had recognized the brusque voice of Mr. Jackson, who was leading the crew investigating the walls of The Place for termite damage. And it was a good thing, too, because he didn’t bother to identify himself.

“Lena, meet me down at The Place at seven before we get started tomorrow morning. Got something right interesting to show you.”

Lena had never heard anything approaching excitement in the voice of the no-nonsense contractor, the father of one of her high school classmates. But the tone in this message made Lena almost eager to get down to the juke joint and liquor store the next morning.

The Place had been closed for nearly a week for repairs from possible termite damage from the big flood the year before. And Lena was beginning to lose her patience with the work that was appearing to drag on.

Inside the dark juke joint, everything seemed strange and dead. No music playing. No smells from the grill. And she could barely make out shapes. Nearly everything in the place was covered with drop cloths or sheets of thick clear plastic. Things looked unfamiliar draped in ghostly garb. She could see the long L-shaped bar that ran along two walls of the place, the walls farthest from the door, and the door at the back of The Place that was a true high-security risk because it offered quick escape for quick-fingered thieves. But that was about all she could see distinctly.

The weak morning light was trying to stream through the tops of the plate-glass windows above the mural of what downtown Mulberry used to look like at that very spot. The unpainted sections allowed the customers to see either blue sky or black. The Place was the kind of bar where people didn’t want to know whether it was day or night outside. And Lena had wearied of the calls
she
received all through the day and night from spouses, bosses and family complaining, “Miss McPherson, you keeping my man/woman/aunt/brother/daddy/husband down at that place way past dark. He/she starting to miss work!”

Lena thought so many times, Like I’m physically down there barring the plate-glass doors of The Place with my body, keeping somebody in there.

She didn’t have to. Nobody ever wanted to leave The Place at the end of a day, except the folks who worked there. And sometimes
they
sat down at one or two in the morning, put their feet up for the first time that day and had a beer themselves before they cleaned up, closed up and headed home.

The Place had never been closed for an entire week, she didn’t think. And her customers—some of whom called her
“Lil
Boss Lady” in deference to her mother—had moved from mere complaints to almost real threats.

Old men flagged her car down on street corners and insisted she pull over.

“Lena, baby, I don’t like it atall. Ain’t even got nowhere to go no mo’. If you don’t get that stuff finished up down there at The Place,” they’d say as they leaned down into her car, bringing with them the smell of old man, “I just may go on and do that work myself!”

Each time, she had to remind the complainant and herself how lucky they all were to have discovered the seminal termite damage before the creatures could do any real damage. Just about everyone in Mulberry who owned a structure of any kind had been on the lookout for termites after the previous year’s flood had engulfed so much of the town. Health officials had warned that the floodwaters from the
Ocawatchee River had not finished their destruction even after they had receded but had left much of the soaked Middle Georgia town susceptible to the wood-loving creatures’ appetite. And although no one liked to think about it, the termites were breeding and flourishing just as all other life in Mulberry.

Closing the juke joint for even a couple of days seemed to take a big chunk out of some folks’ lives.

The big greasy-looking stainless-steel restaurant stove and grill behind the bar near the front door was clean and cold, a rare condition, under the sheets of thick plastic. Even the big gray smoke hood over the stove had been cleaned and draped in plastic. On a normal morning, Lena thought, the stove would have been red-hot by now with ham and bacon and sausage sizzling, a giant pot of grits bubbling, bags of white and whole-wheat bread and stacks of trays of cozy brown eggs in cartons waiting for their orders. Lena’s stomach growled a bit in response to the thought and realized, looking down at the large square face of her wristwatch, that it was 6:45
A.M.
, past time for her breakfast. She felt around in her quilted purse until she found her tiny microcassette tape recorder and spoke to her assistant, Precious.

“Presh, call Miss Louise in East Mulberry and let her know I’m okay. She’ll worry ’cause I missed breakfast. If you talk to her after noon, tell her I had a big lunch. Make up a menu heavy on vegetables if she asks.”

Lena dropped the recorder back in her purse, then snapped her fingers and retrieved the machine.

“And will someone please call Mr. Pete’s son in Pleasant Hill and find out what ’thang’ I’m supposed to be taking care of for him?”

Lena snapped her purse shut and looked back at the empty stove. She missed seeing Miss Chevron, the cook, standing over the smoking grill, a bandana tied over her graying head, sweating and wiping it away with the red-and-white-checkered dish towel thrown over her shoulder.

At each stool at the counter, Lena saw the image of a different old
customer of The Place. It seemed that some of them, like Peanut and Yakkity-Yak and Red, had sat there so long their afterimage still remained. She could almost touch their backs like taps for the draft beer as she passed their designated seats.

Lena couldn’t see them, but she knew the tall beer taps had been drained and cleaned before being covered. The workers had left the neon signs hanging on the walls uncovered, but Lena didn’t bother to try to turn them on. Most of them were new promotions like green and pink palm trees for some tropical wine cooler, but Lena had made sure that there were also a few older signs for Bluebird grapefruit juice and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Some no longer lit up when they were plugged in. She knew there was no electricity in the outlets against that side and back wall. But she knew there would be juice for the jukebox.

When she could finally make out the rounded top of the jukebox draped in a spectral white painter’s drop cloth, she went for it as if it were a long-lost friend. She didn’t like seeing her family business shrouded like this.

She hadn’t been inside The Place herself in more than a week. Gloria, the manager, was overseeing the renovation work there and didn’t like folks hovering over her workers any more than Lena did when she was trying to get something done. So Lena had made a point of staying away. Anyway, she had more than enough to keep her hopping without this responsibility, too.

As Lena moved slowly toward the jukebox, her eyes adjusted bit by bit to the darkness. With each careful step, she could feel the grains of dust and dirt and crumbled Sheetrock crunch under her feet like spilled grains of sugar. It set her teeth on edge.

God only knows what the new black and gray tile I just put in after the flood looks like now, she thought. The workers had stacked some lumber and equipment in rows, making aisles and a working space in the middle of The Place.

She threw her thin purse strap over her shoulder, flung the cover off the jukebox like a magician and stood there a moment letting the
dust settle. She had to admire the old retooled nickelodeon she had finally bought, instead of leasing, for The Place. It made her smile just to run her fingers over the red square buttons and the selections printed under the clear plastic next to them. The buttons felt a little greasy. When she touched one of them, she thought she could feel the pressure of every thumb and forefinger that had ever pressed that particular key.

Lena even had songs on the jukebox that everyone acknowledged and respected as hers, just as they had with her mother. Everybody at The Place seemed to have his or her own personal song. Nellie’s song had been “Please Come Home for Christmas.” Lena’s song changed all the time. Folks let her get away with that.