Bailey's Cafe Read online

  It was about then I started drinking real heavy, trying to figure out how it all happened—when had it happened? And no point in going to my husband. When it came to something connected with our son, he was a King first and last. So, yes, I went to … her. And I cried in her arms, never talking much sense and drunk lots of the time. She’d really become, as my husband called her, that special friend. And at least she understood why I felt there was a reason to cry when he got accepted into Harvard. Nobody else would have. Not even my own family. They were as happy as the Kings over that one. And that’s how they got suckered into that cookout Uncle Eli threw. I warned ’em not to come. I had a bad bad feeling about the whole thing. Why would Uncle Eli invite the Bells to celebrate with the Kings?

  Why, to do just what he did. To embarrass them in front of everyone on Sugar Hill. To give the boy a real send-off by killing any last bit of respect he might have had for my side of the family. The radio had been saying for days that it was gonna rain on the weekend, and, looking back, I can see that was part of his plan. So was telling my people to come two hours later than he told anybody else—and telling ’em to bring all the food and liquor they wanted. But see, he’d already rented this big striped tent to set up in my backyard and hired waiters and a cook. They brought in one of those new propane grills, although I had a special-made barbecue pit in the corner of the yard. He coulda easily put the tent over my barbecue pit. But then that woulda meant that when my people finally arrived, he couldn’t have done what he did. Cause it did rain that day.

  And there’s all of Sugar Hill under his fancy tent with their fancy clothes, chitting and chatting, with their champagne glasses. His flunky waiters running between ’em with little bits of grilled mushrooms, smoked cheese, and that kind of shit on silver trays. That sound like a cookout to you? So here come my people with the things they was supposed to bring: a crate of spareribs and about thirty chickens that Mother had cut up and soaked overnight in her special sauce, bowls of potato salad and coleslaw, cases and cases of beer. They stack all that stuff up in the corner of the yard, cause there sure wasn’t no room under Uncle Eli’s tent. And they’re ready to cook—ya know, join the crowd. But it don’t take ’em too long to figure out the deal. His hired cook had that little propane grill all filled up with her mess, so they could just get out there in the rain or shut up.

  Like I told you, I’m from proud people. And there was no way they were gonna go home with their tails between their legs just cause they’d been set up. They came for a cookout and a cookout they would have. I helped ’em the best I knew how, finding as many umbrellas in the house as I could. But it was kinda pitiful to watch them trying to light up the charcoal on my open pit in all that rain. And the cardboard boxes started soaking through at the bottom and tearing up. Water getting up under the wax paper on the potato salad and ruining it. And the crowd under that striped tent looking out at ’em like they were a bunch of trained monkeys from the circus. My husband told me I shouldn’t keep running out there with them in the rain; they were welcome under the tent. And I told him to go to hell. Couldn’t he see what was going on?

  They never did get that fire lit. But, my brother joked, at least we remembered to bring our own beer openers. And so they stood out there and ate their wet potato salad and got drunk off their warm beer. Mother caught a chill from being out in the damp. The next week it turned into pneumonia. The next month she was dead. My husband said I was out of order, blaming Uncle Eli for her death. After all, she was over ninety years old. And that whole cookout business, why, that whole business had just been a misunderstanding. I looked into that man’s eyes and saw that he actually believed what he was saying. And yes, it might as well have been a dead woman ranting at him. My words were lost, lost.

  Liquor wasn’t enough after that. Nothing was enough to answer the question that kept haunting me and haunting me—when had Uncle Eli killed me in my own home? When? And what had he used? I couldn’t stand to have my husband touch me after that. I looked for the answer in her arms, but now even she wasn’t enough. But there were hidden places, smoky back rooms, with others like her. No, that’s not the truth, they weren’t like her. Those others were stone dykes. They tried to dress like men. They tried to swagger like men. And they scared the hell out of me. If I had wanted a man, I knew how to find one—and sure knew what to do with one. I had gone to those clubs looking for women. Looking for answers. And then one night someone slipped a little paper envelope of white powder in my hand, and I found what I needed.

  I’m gonna tell you why people get high: cause when you’re that far up there, everything becomes clear. I ain’t lying, crystal clear. I mean, you can see everything about your life, all at one time. Every face. Every name. Every place you passed through. The questions you been asking, why you asked ’em, what the answers are, what to do about it—all at one time. Cause you high, ya know, way up high, and so it’s all laid out before you. All this stuff I been telling you—it wasn’t jumbled up like now—it was clear, clear as day—and all at one time. Except it takes more than one ride to remember all that stuff when you come back down. So you go up again to remember a little more. And up again. You see, there’s a whole lot going on in even the simplest life, a whole lot to put in order. And then you start thinking that, maybe, if you got a little higher than the time before, you’d have more of the answers in your mind when the ride was over. So you sniff the horse. Then you pop the horse. And after a while the only decent ride is through the mainline.

  I’m not making no excuses for becoming a junkie. In fact, I was glad I discovered heroin. Yeah, I was glad—do you hear me?—glad. Cause when that dyke club got raided and Uncle Eli used every bit of influence he had to make sure my name hit the newspapers and stayed in the papers, throwing dirt on everything about my life, just digging, digging, until they dug up my special friend and my husband had to say, had to say he didn’t know, cause, after all, he was a man and a King and there was his son to consider, so I’m out there by myself, on display like a painted dummy in a window as the name Jesse Bell came to mean that no-good slut from the docks and the nineteen years I’d put into my marriage didn’t amount to dog shit; the care I’d given my son—dog shit; the clothes I wore, the music I liked, the school I went to, the family I came from, everything that made me me—dog shit; cause nobody was interested in my side of the story, not the reporters, not the neighbors, not the divorce court, nobody, cause everybody was standing around like vultures looking at me fall fall fall, waiting for me to smash my brains on the pavement, yeah, waiting for me to lose my mind; and within a inch of the ground, within a inch of having my head split open and my brains spill out, Jesse Bell grabbed onto the reins of that white horse, letting ’em all see her spread wings as she rose.

  It’s time for me and Jesse to put the cards away; the sun is gonna be up soon. She’s waiting to spin out her last few nickels in the juke. She’d better get back to the boardinghouse before she’s missed, although I’ve got a feeling that Eve knows about her slipping out to visit with me. Little really escapes her.

  Looking at Jesse with the blue-and-yellow lights of the jukebox playing across the healthy tones of her skin, it’s hard to believe it’s the same woman who came in here with Eve’s card a year ago. The business card was creased and smudged, curled and ragged on the ends. It looked like it’d been through fifty wars—one less than the woman carrying it.

  —There’s no fucking address like this on the block.

  She was standing there defiant in a pair of run-down Italian pumps. But none of the customers were going to disagree with her, because there was no house number like that on the block. To them she was a woman stating the obvious, so they kept on eating and ignored her.

  —What are you looking for? I asked.

  —The address on this card, goddammit.

  She was sweating heavily in a wrinkled silk chemise and the weather wasn’t hot. Her nose was runny, her eyes weak and teary. A well-dressed junkie.
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  —What are you looking for? I asked again.

  —This address, goddammit.

  With short, jerky motions she pushed the card across the countertop, her fingernails broken and filthy. I didn’t have to read it. You’ll never find it, was all I said before I turned back to scraping the grill.

  Eve had given that card to Jesse in the women’s house of detention. A revolving door for petty offenses: vagrancy, shoplifting, prostitution, third-degree assault. She goes there once a month under a program set up by the commissioner of correction. It’s your typical charity work for bored society women. The haves trip in and mingle for a while with the have-nots. They bring ’em lipstick, combs, toothpaste, cigarettes, and they listen to their troubles. Friendly Visitors, or something like that. Eve joined the group because it’s the only way she can get down to the isolation cells. But she usually finds herself making that part of the friendly visit alone. The stench is something awful. Alcoholics. Junkies. Hysterics. The problem population. The women crouch in wire-mesh cages among the watery stools from overflowing toilets. If they’re not too sick to care, they push their floor mattresses away from the corners where they have to vomit. Because if they’re not too sick to care, they’ve tried to keep the one sink clean enough to allow them to drink from the faucet.

  The only thing Eve brings to the prison is her calling cards. She walks slowly down the dark hall between the isolation cells, looking at each woman. And many times she’ll walk back up that hall without having spoken to one of them or handed out a single card. These visits are very practical. And there’s no need to waste directions on someone who’s just going to spend her life staying lost. For some reason she did stop at Jesse’s cell. And no, she wasn’t moved by her story. But when she was tired of wallowing in her own shit, come and find her.

  And Jesse finally did. She stumbled in here three or four times, yelling about the wrong address, until it dawned on her to simply ask, How do I get to Eve’s? I was more than happy to tell her. She had a pretty rough mouth and a lot of the customers were complaining. No, only Sister Carrie was complaining. But when Carrie starts up it can sound like a cast of thousands. And she was the one who finally remembered Jesse’s picture from those old newspaper articles and kept at folks in here until they remembered the story too—or, at least, said they did to shut her up. Jesse is still real real sensitive on that issue and Carrie smelling blood will go in for the kill every time she sees her. She’ll have her daughter, Angel, hand her that dog-eared Bible from the bottom of her canvas bag and get the urge to start reading aloud, and I mean, loud:

  —The thing abominable to the Lord; a wife that committeth adultery which taketh strangers instead of her husband!

  Jesse will throw her fork down and start cussing something furious, which only spurs Carrie on. And I’m suspicious that Carrie takes a little poetic license with some of those verses:

  —And the Lord saith, Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna burn and fry because of vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.

  Once or twice I’ve had to keep Jesse from jumping on Carrie. I’m not a churchgoing man and don’t want to criticize somebody else’s beliefs. But it started becoming clear to me that Jesse’s salvation isn’t the thing uppermost on Carrie’s mind. It’s like she wants Jesse to strike her, like it would prove something.

  Eve won’t put up with it and she can hit Carrie where it really hurts. Carrie is partial to the whore Scriptures. To hear her reading, you’d think loose women were the only thing ever on the Lord’s mind. Eve will be at the counter, minding her own business, when Carrie starts up. She’s got a high voice that she makes sure gets heard all the way from the window tables. She licks that thumb and starts flicking the pages of her Bible:

  —Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms.

  Without turning around, Eve will raise her own voice and talk straight across the counter to the lard cans up on the shelf: Somebody in here likes Ezekiel. Somebody even likes the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel.

  Carrie’s mouth drops open. She looks at the page and looks at Eve’s back. Then she looks back at the page again, hoping some miracle will change it. But since loud is righteous in her book, she gets louder still:

  —How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord God, seeing thou doest all these things the work of an imperious whorish woman!

  Eve keeps holding her conversation with the lard: Somebody even likes the thirtieth verse of the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel. And maybe somebody should try the fifty-second verse on for size. And before Carrie can lick that thumb and flip over the page, Eve is quoting it by heart:

  —Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters.

  Carrie’s chest starts heaving and she’s just licking that thumb and flicking those pages until they’re a blur. She’s heading towards Revelation. That book of the Bible is big on whores.

  —And somebody should try something else, Eve shouts, somebody should try Isaiah, the twelfth chapter …

  I gotta jump in and stop Eve now. Cause Carrie is working herself up into a frenzy. The next thing, she’ll be running over to the Temple to bring back reinforcements, and my nerves can’t take all those tambourines and drums.

  This same thing goes on time after time; Sister Carrie seems to forget that Eve was raised by a preacher. No, I think she needs to forget that Eve was raised by a preacher, cause that fact makes her own world a lot more uncertain. But I don’t know, to me there are a lot of ways to be a Christian; the Bible is an awfully large book. And if you want to get technical about the matter, the whole thing was a gift to Christians from Jews. Sure, Eve is a strange cookie and that setup at her brownstone walks a real thin line, but Carrie will be hard pressed to condemn her with the Bible. Just look at what Eve did for Jesse. She went the distance and cured her—and I mean, cured her—in less than a month.

  And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

  Now Jesse’s reading on how Eve helped her beat the habit is a whole lot different. She swears that Eve wouldn’t have cared if she had died. The funny thing is that Jesse is probably right. But I said unto thee when thou wast in thy own blood, Live.

  After Jesse finally found Eve, they came back in here for a cup of coffee and a very long talk. Jesse did most of the talking, and she also ordered the peach cobbler and heaped on spoonfuls of sugar. I didn’t take it as a comment on my wife’s specialty; she wasn’t the first junkie we’d had in the place. Jesse ran on and on, swore up and down that she wanted to quit. She’d gotten on the junk because once it was the best thing she had in a bad situation, but the horse had started taking her as low as it had taken her high, and yes, she wanted to quit. She smoked like a chimney, drank cup after cup of syrupy coffee, and tried to figure out what the stone-faced woman across from her was thinking. She knew she’d probably heard it all before …

  —Yes, Eve said, I have.

  But this time it was coming on the square; she’d taken her last ride.

  —How long ago? Eve asked her.

  —Not since the early morning.

  —How long ago? Eve asked her again.

  —All right, more like four hours.

  —You’re too calm; it’s more like three.

  All right, so it was three, just before she’d knocked on her door. But it was the last ride and she was gonna quit.

  Jesse didn’t like the way Eve was looking at her. It’s not that Eve was looking like she disbelieved her, or even looking at her with pity or disgust. Eve was only looking distracted, like she’d been waiting a
t a bus stop five minutes too long, and Jesse was the five minutes.

  —There’s something extremely important you need to know about me, Eve said. I never waste my time. Never. And if you don’t come off the dope, then I’ve wasted over an hour listening to you claim that you will. Do you understand what that means, Jesse?

  Jesse didn’t quite know what it meant, but this weird mama-jama was beginning to really scare her.

  —It means, Eve continued, that now you’ve put me into the position of ensuring that I have not wasted this hour.

  Then Eve led her straight to the back of the cafe. She flung open the door and let her see all that black, empty space. Jesse dug her fingernails into the door frame like a cat, thinking that the crazy bitch was gonna shove her out into oblivion. A dead junkie was certainly not gonna be using anymore, and a dead junkie would save Eve her precious hour.

  —What do you see? Eve asked.

  Oh, Mother, get her out of here. She’d just try to take the cure at Lexington again. She’d go right back to Lexington and this time behave herself. No more stealing needles. No more cussing out the doctors and bribing the orderlies.

  —You know I don’t see a fucking thing.

  —Then I know that you’ve been lying. You have no intentions of quitting.

  —I do want to quit, goddamn you!

  —So what do you see?

  And there it was: the simple bedroom she’d had as a girl. The raw pine floor. The single window looking out at other tar-paper shacks on the waterfront. Her bed with the chenille spread. Her secondhand dresser. Her movie-star posters torn from Modern Screen and tacked on the mildewed wall: Bette Davis. Irene Dunn. Clark Gable. Joan Crawford. She could even hear Mother wrestling with that old wood stove in the kitchen, smell the frying butterfish and turnip greens. A lump formed in her throat. But it wasn’t real; it couldn’t be real. She was going around the bend and starting to hallucinate. God, how she needed a fix.