Black and Blue
Philberta’s resplendent lower lip like a ripe
plum wanted plucking. Round luminescent cheeks set off her broad flat nose. Her
tightly wound hair fit like a cap on her head. Covered her ears.
Heavy
in the legs and calves, Philberta stood nearly six feet tall.
Her
features, along with the almond tones of her skin suggested a parent of African
lineage.
As
a result, and as a youth adopted by white parents, she lived in limbo—one foot
in either world and often lost her balance. Often fell out of place.
Until
landing in prison. Landing firmly on both feet.
Coming
into her womanhood on the cusp of the Roaring Twenties, she struggled against
being categorized, but society decided for her.
They labeled her Negro. Of course, this demarcation demoted her from the
white world in which she grew up. Estranged her from parents who confessed
nothing and denied everything. Relegated her to back doors, separate fountains,
and disreputable hotels.
Compromised,
she strove to carve out her own space. Create her own story in which to thrive.
And
at age 28 introduced herself to New Orleans as a blues singer. Her genetic
duality and the discord it engendered imbued her with the soul and narrative of
the twice dispossessed. Being neither Black nor white, neither wholly present
in one community nor the other, she could evoke in her voice the depths of
despair; the breadth of bitterness. Betrayals.
Like
no other.
Initially,
she performed in more obscure clubs throughout the Quarter. Gained a
reputation. That reputation drew—entrepreneurs. Jupiter Crawford the most
flamboyant among them.
“Flash
and dash and all about the cash,” folks would say about him.
He
didn’t deny it.
A
lean, syncopated Black man, Jupiter sported a red suit with yellow vest. His
shoes shimmered ebony. His white fedora served as a prop he used to accentuate
his dress and his patter. His swaggering persona.
His
face came on all sharp angles—high-cut cheekbones, razor sharp chin, thin
aristocratic nose. The man knew how to lay down a brassy line. Blew a haunting
trumpet that ached with a terrible longing—it said for him what he could not.
Would
not.
It
spoke of his repressed pain hidden under all the razzle-dazzle.
But
said nothing about his diseased heart.
Jupiter
attended one of Philberta’s shows and accosted her afterwards. “You’ve got some
serious pipes,” he said by way of introduction. “Why not take your act further
uptown?”
“To
where?” Philberta had heard of Jupiter and kept her reserve.
“Where
I’m gigging with my band.”
“What’s
the catch?”
“Better
pay. More exposure. Nothing to lose.”
“What’s
the catch, otherwise,” Philberta repeated, meaning she wouldn’t stand for any
nonsense.
“Damn,
woman, Jupiter Crawford offering you a bigger better tasting piece of pie, you
don’t bother how he baked it.”
Philberta
considered him a moment. Made him wait. Drawing the line between them.
Then released him with,
“I’ll come down and give a listen, and think on it—later.”
His
dress failed to impress her or his manner instill much faith. Men with
attitudes and possessive tendencies were dime-a-dozen and worth just about that
much.
But
Philberta read his aura. What he hid. And knew his vulnerabilities. A Black man
in an oppressive white world. He may carry a knife. He may posture and pose. He
may hustle the streets with bravado, but he still needed a place to be
simply—himself. To rest his head. To be at ease.
If
that was possible.
“Don’t
make me wait,” he said and flashed his silver-dollar grin and sauntered away.
A
week later, Philberta took a night off and made her way to the Broadstreet Bistro
where Jupiter and his band played. Sat and watched and listened to Jupiter make
his trumpet shimmer and wail. Blow open the doors and soar all the way to
heaven marching with those saints. He called out his soul. Evoked his legacy
and all the anguish and exuberance therein.
He
bared himself.
Which
both enthralled and disconcerted Philberta. A man so conflicted. In disharmony
with his circumstances. The world. A man so boxed in wanted release; wanted
out.
Beyond
the testimony of his trumpet.
Such
an escape would hurl anyone in his orbit free of his gravity. Casting them
adrift into unmoored space.
As
Philberta came to be.
But
not before she became his Europa. His moon to her Jupiter.
As
one body is attracted to another and there existed nothing else for it.
Philberta
agreed to sing for Jupiter and The Starmen. She performed six nights a week. Mondays
off for laundry and sleep and doing not a damned thing.
The
Broadstreet Bistro bustled with business. Even white folks appropriated
Jupiter’s music—as far as it went—in the club.
And
her singing.
No
show played the same. Each innovation, each new iteration Jupiter created drew
Philberta nearer and nearer to his core. To her destiny. One rain-soaked
evening, the stage went dark and from the back of the room Jupiter played the
horn solo from Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. The crowd went quiet. The ice tinkling
in glasses, the shuffling of chairs, the comings and goings caught in the first
few blue notes held. It seemed the entire universe poised on the moment. Listened
as if to a revelation. The brass-blown modulations haunted, resonated deep
within Philberta. She ached for him.
It
seemed to her a requiem.
And
it was.
Weeks
passed. Jupiter became increasingly restive. Hemmed in by his heritage, by
white hegemony, no matter how sweetly he played his trumpet there seemed no way
to emancipate himself from his circumstances.
Or
the timebomb ticking in his chest.
Exhausted
one Saturday evening he dropped onto the backroom couch utterly spent.
Philberta offered him her bottle of water. He drank in gulps. She sat and said,
“You need to rest, Jupiter. Playing too long, too—deeply. Body and soul can’t
sustain it.”
“I’m
playing for my supper.”
“You’re
playing for an early grave,” she responded, unwittingly telling the trumpeter
his fate.
“The
thing about the grave is it don’t discriminate. Everybody liberated that way.”
“You
mean, only the dead go free?”
The
question remained unanswered as he had already given way to sleep.
His
thin heart beating on against its own foreordained failure.
They
became companions—of a sort. Philberta provided sanctuary—consoled him. Her
consolations took them both to places they hadn’t been before. Jupiter giving
way to tentative tender commensurations. Philberta to unchecked passions.
She
promised herself not to love him. Who could love such a blaze of a man without
getting burned?
But
having been bereft of such intense emotional attachments all her life, his
magnetic attraction compelled her heart, and months into their relationship,
they spent the long hours to dawn entwined. Jupiter exhausted and utterly
exposed—trusting her—Philberta cradling him, keeping him safe.
All
round them the assault against their race continued. The lynchings. The unjust
imprisonments—another form of slavery. The separate and unequal. When the fine
folks of Tulsa, Oklahoma, burned down the thriving Black enterprises and homes
in their city—killing hundreds, Philberta sang that evening with an intensity
that shook the very foundations of the club. Her voice wrenching at the soul
where she battled her own complications. Her own duality. Harboring the
perpetrator and the prosecuted, she wrestled with both guilt and rage.
With
desolation.
When
that inebriated white man from a group of several other Caucasians stood and
shouted, “To hell with this. It ain’t nothing but Nigger music!”
Philberta
stopped mid-phrase and called out, “You’re the hell we’re living with!”
“You
don’t know the half-of-it,” the heckler shouted and pushed through the throng
to get at her. She, being a big woman already distraught, met him at the stage
and walloped his head with an open palm that spun him about.
Jupiter,
himself primed, pent-up with aggrieved frustrations, leaped from the stage to
engage him, his quick knife in hand, and the Bistro burst into an inferno of
inflamed folks punching, biting, scratching, assaulting one another with
unchecked ferocity.
And
Jupiter, unleashing his suppressed fury, drove his keen blade into the soft
flesh of the belligerent. Again and again. Striking at his demons. Striking at
his repressions. Striking out.
Philberta
crossed down to Jupiter as he knelt at the dead man’s side. She stood Jupiter
up. Took the knife in hand, snapped it closed and secured it in a pocket.
Jupiter had trouble breathing. She led from the melee out into the night.
By
the time the police arrived, most of the damage had been done.
In
her apartment, on that steamy June evening engorged with blood-lust, they came
together—a sort of primordial response to the barbarity—a cry-out against the
savagery of such visceral hate. An affirmation yes where so much remained
embittered by no.
Later,
passions cooled, reality subdued them and Jupiter announced, “I’m leaving
Orleans.”
“It’s
best,” Philberta murmured, already inured to what she feared would happen had.
“The
man dead for sure.”
“Anyone
could have done it. They’ll never know.”
“He
had it coming.”
“The
lot of them kind have it coming.”
“Yeah,”
Jupiter told her, “they sure as hell do.” He grimaced then. Fading. His
features softened. Philberta could tell she was losing him.
Something
in him giving way—his compromised heart.
“Where
you going?” she asked, knowing the answer—allowing him the charade. “From
here?”
“Everywhere,”
Jupiter said believing it. “Chicago. Detroit. New York City.”
“Yes,
your trumpet could do that for you.”
“Yeah,,”
he agreed. “it damn-well could.” He smiled, wanly. Harboring one last pretty
thought to send him on his way. One last breath of life before goodbye.
The
weight of the world, it seemed to Philberta, had crushed him. The oppressive
burden of racial enmity suppressing his life.
Philberta
kissed his forehead, slipped from their double bed, pulled on a chemise, and
stood at the opened window considering the flickering neon lights, the shadowy
strangers disregarding one another. The anonymity of being.
Being
and not.
She
grieved for Jupiter. And herself. Her soul bruised and battered—now
beleaguered. No matter how close we come to one another she thought, as she
observed the passers-by, we remain apart. Strangers. Always.
Outside
looking in.
Even
Jupiter, all said and done, remained a mystery.
Tears
like pearls glistened on her cheeks.
No
one to kiss them away.
When
the police crashed into her room, she never flinched.
The
knife spoke volumes. It couldn’t be explained away. And beyond everything else,
she had lost her voice.
Months
later, Philberta peers out beyond the bars that keep the world out as much as
they keep her in. She can hear, in her mind, Jupiter crowing while wielding his
trumpet: “This here is God’s instrument,” he’d declare. “No question. Read your
damned Bible. Gideon, Joshua, Joab, Joshaphat. Joshaphat, there’s a cat with an
uptown name. The whole lot of them prophetable types proclaiming one thing or
another with just such a horn. Hallelujah!”
Then
he’d play. Exorcising his demons. Calling on the angels.
And
Philberta,
Remembering—
Weeps.
Bio: Kayner's poems, plays and prose have won numerous prizes and
appeared in a variety of publications. These include: Passager, Mazagaine,
Cricket, Something Involving a Mailbox, Heure, Write City Review, Helix
Literary Magazine, Subterranean Blues, Ekphrastic Review, Smoky Blue Literary
Journal, Quibble, On the Run and so forth.