I glance to Nana Jean, who standing with her arms folded, face hard as stone as she stares at the Ku Klux arm on the table. In my head, seems I can hear the hot July wind whistling through those bottle trees outside, singing her words.
Bad wedduh, bad wedduh, bad wedduh, gwine come …
Notation 32:
There’s a Shout we call Rock Daniel. Now Daniel was a slave always stealing from massa’s storehouse. Nobody tell. They like getting that meat too. And Daniel’s stealing not no real sin—not when the first set of stealing was they who stole us from Africy. One time, he stealing just as massa coming to the storehouse. The slaves start singing loud to warn him! When we do that Shout, we tell Daniel to “move” and “rock”—to slip past massa’s whip [laughter]! Even in the wickedest times, you got to find some enjoyment. Or you not gon’ survive.
—Interview with Jupiter “Sticker” Woodberry, age seventy, transliterated from the Gullah by EK
THREE
The music at Frenchy’s so loud I feel it on my insides. The piano man up out his seat, one leg hanging off the grainy wood and pounding the keys hard enough to break them. He sweating so I’m wondering how that shiny conk holding up. Whole while he wailing on about some big-boned woman he left in New Orleans, just about jumping out his maroon suit to croon, “And when she roll that jelly!” The crowd roars, men whooping and women fanning hands like to cool him off.
Frenchy’s Inn not the only colored spot in Macon. But tonight it’s the one to be at. Most here is sharecroppers and laborers. Every table packed. Where there ain’t tables people on their feet, roosted on the stairs—fitting in however. Hardly room to dance or a patch of quiet to think. Whole place is a hot, sweltering, haze-of-July-in-Georgia mess. But long as the liquor pouring and the music going, everybody right as rain.
Sadie called it. No bootlegging tonight. Nana Jean bid us step out, even if she ain’t one for “de jook jaint nonsense.” Frenchy’s not no regular juke joint, though—no shotgun shack what got leaks in the roof. It’s a full two stories and an inn for colored travelers, nice enough so folk wear their best—which ain’t much for laborers and sharecroppers. But me and my set, we step out in style.
I traded in my knickers for a marigold dress beaded with embroidery that glitters in the light of kerosene lamps. Chef dressed down in a dark plaid, rust-colored suit with an orange bow tie, looking like she walked right off Harlem’s streets. Even got Sadie out of them overalls and into a red lace chemise gown. Don’t look half-bad on her skinny self, even while she up on our table whistling at the piano man. When he finishes to cheers she climbs down to fall into her seat.
“Hard to believe your grandpappy was a preacher,” Chef calls over.
Sadie snorts, flicking back her long braid. “It ain’t Sunday. Grandpappy, rest his soul, won’t mind none.” She picks up a bottle of Mama’s Water before opting for the pilfered whiskey, pouring it heavy in our glasses.
“Oh, that’s enough for me, Miss Sadie!” a thickset man says. That there’s Lester, a Macon local who always finds his way to us, or more properly to Sadie. She like her men husky, and the two fooled around some months back. But she got this rule of not spending the night with the same man twice. Say otherwise they get to thinking stupid. Whatever she put on Lester, though, left him nose open, and he been trying to court her since. Some men just like trouble.
“Lester Henry,” she says in a tone hot enough to lay down your baby hairs. “You betta move that hand from on top your glass ’fore I move it for you. This a juke joint, not no temperance revival!”
Lester’s smile slides away, drooping his meaty jowls. But he moves his hand.
Chef barks a laugh. She got an arm around Bessie, another local who remind me of the big-boned woman from the song. Her ruby-painted fingernails trace lazy lines through the part in Chef’s short-trimmed hair and the two lean into each other in the way of lovers rediscovering their familiarity. The sight send my own eyes wandering, until they land on the finest thing in the room.
Michael George—who folk call Frenchy. On account of his creole talk.
He come from St. Lucia. Left home when he was sixteen, looking to find work on Roosevelt’s Panama Canal. Only when he get there it was done already. So he started traveling. Been through the West Indies, South America, and whereabouts. Come up to Florida and kept moving, settling in Macon and opening up this spot. Claim it’s a mix of a Mississippi juke joint, rum shops they got in St. Lucia, and spots he seen in Cuba. Say poor folk deserve some fanciness too.
He standing near the bar—tall and good looking. I can make out the trace of his shoulders under the high-collared striped shirt and ivory suit jacket that fit just right on his dark skin. I’m remembering what he look like with it off too. There’s this spot, where his leg meet his waist, that’s a perfect V, and I imagine my fingers strumming it …
“Maryse, what you over there smiling about?”
I turn to find Sadie eyeing me, and sip my whiskey. Was I smiling?
“You best go get that man ’fore one of them gals try to hitch him.” She nods to a cluster of women around him. “Know good and well that your man. Probably bad-mouthing us too.”
Maybe so. Folk in Macon have peculiar ideas about us. Say we witches, like they whisper Nana Jean is. You’d think lady bootleggers was scandalous enough.
Sadie leans close. “You want me to bust up one of them heffas?” Her nostrils flare and the air prickles. She mean it too. Don’t mind our fussing and carrying on. Sadie will tear up this whole joint if she catch whiff somebody out to hurt me or Chef. It’s sweet, in a crazy way.
“Sadie Watkins, I ain’t never fought over no man and not starting today.”
“Gal, don’t go starting trouble,” Bessie warns. “Wasn’t for Maryse, Frenchy might not have let you back up in here after last time.”
Sadie rolls her eyes. But she settles back and I breathe easy. Chef glances my way, mouthing, Stop playing with dynamite!
We’re saved when Lester starts up on his favorite topic—Marcus Garvey. He traveled up north once and come back with a head full of Garvey. Even sells UNIA newspapers here in Macon. Why he thinks that might impress Sadie I got no idea.
I look back to Michael George to find his eyes lingering on me above the heads of the women about him. He smiles pretty, like I’m the only other person here, like he’s seeing me again for the first time when we met a year back. Same smile he had on when we walked through the door tonight, catching me in a hug. The solid feel of him still in my head, drinking in his familiar scent mingled with shaving cream. We ain’t get to talk long, just some assurances of later before he set us up at a table. But the heat of his look right now makes my belly flutter, and I’m wondering how long later might be? Somebody calls to him, taking his eyes away, and I’m plunged back into the conversation going on about me.
“And that’s why Mr. Garvey says the Negro has to go back to Africa, to claim what’s ours.” Leave it up to Lester to talk politics in a juke joint.
Sadie seems like she only half listening, but then declares, “I say we go to Europe. See how they like getting carved up—beat up as they is after the war.”