By Cheryl J. Anthony
Desta Dahlia Willoughby
People like to think that because Harlem is in New York City, and is the self-anointed Negro Oasis in America in 1930, that it’s not a small town done up in wolfs’ clothing; a place with the same small town blights: nosiness, gossiping, bad-mouthing and simple backwardness that the migrants lived with Down South. It’s a little better hidden here, is all. The largesse of New York provides significant distraction. You look for ways to live a better life until you realize you can’t. That’s when tongues start wagging. People live to talk. Anywhere. All the time. Cheapest, most satisfying, fun there is.
Mozelle and I are migrants – from the District of Columbia and Chicago respectively – and we talk too, but in our apartments. We don’t indulge inflamed passions with the same verve and disregard for privacy common to the working class and downtrodden amongst us. We are successful business women, known in the community and, therefore, the objects of insult and spite. Very few know the facts of our lives so grudges are harbored and ignorance runs rampant. The image I, in particular, present to the world is one meant to whip up a little chatter. Make them wonder. My version of fun.
I’m a tease by nature. Mozelle, she carries her grievances and disappointments like Jesus did his cross. Me, I keep my blunders and lapses, betrayals caused and suffered, in a gorgeous red hatbox tied with thick gold cord on a shelf in the guest bedroom closet. These scraps of paper were an effort to write, retrieve, and reflect upon, so the hatbox often went untouched for months. And now I’m at the age where my errors are seldom worth recording. I don’t call myself to account like I used to. That died when Daniel Powell Gardner did. My patron and teacher. The love of my life.
Yes, people talk, talk, TALK. Especially about anything that may call for a little forehand knowledge of a why and wherefore that would make the journey to understanding easier. Daniel showed me how people talk in direct proportion to their propensity for laziness. I’ve seen this proved time and again, and because my dear Mozelle reminds me often that You can’t stop folks from speaking their minds, Dee-Dee, I’ve taken it upon myself to let the mystery of Desta Willoughby perpetuate itself on street corners. In barbers’ chairs and at the shampoo station. In juke joints, church pews, and in the aisle at Carmine’s alongside the corn flakes and Rice Krispies. Mystery is my stock-in-trade, so what’s the harm in curiosity? Could be some fun tucked away in there.
Besides, a word ain’t nothin’ but a puff of stale breath. I understand this. Respect it. But the people who’ll speak next, well, let’s just say they don’t appreciate how the intention behind the words matters. They don’t grasp the connection between heart-speak and what it makes live in the world. Not their fault, really. It’s just how some folks are.
Missy House
When we called Miss Alice’s White Rose Working Girls Home home, I figured there was no place do us bettah than that. Ruth Brown did day work all over Manhattan back then. Enough for our room and board and baby supplies for Ruth’s Bella Ada. And the every so often medicine or doctor visit for me. Ruth kep’ the leftovers in the leather drawstring pouch Johnnie Scott usedta keep his tobacco in. Belle Ada looks more like him than Ruth. But maybe thas jus me tryin,’ with what lil might might still be in me, to keep seein’ my son’s livin’ face. Not the dead one. Head in a noose. Rope tied to the tree. Tree front a the Webster County Courthouse, Belle Star, Georgia. He come there sign the paper get us off that peanut plantation. Headed wes’. Colorado. Johnnie Scott wanted to live where there was snow. Work a cattle ranch. He wanted his chile to feel all kinds a weather. See mountains. One day marry a cowboy, though he didn’t even get to see his baby girl born. Always knew it’d be a girl. He loved the sound a D-E-N-V-E-R and Ruth almost named the baby that, but it hurt too much. Made her remember how it made him feel hopeful in spite a how hard it might be stake a claim for us, and make good on it. But Johnnie Scott was gonna try, and Ruth believed it would all come true, and I was there to put the pieces back togethah when it all got smashed.
Johnnie Scott woulda hated New York City. But he woulda understood – lookin’ at Ruth from on high those firs’ few weeks aftah the birth – why I had to get her gone from Belle Star.
Ruth’s takin’ to the big city bettah than I woulda thought.
Maybe Belle Ada’ll visit Denver one day. Stake her own claim.
Queen Desta can’t stan’ me talkin’ to Belle Ada ‘bout Colorado. Says I’m fillin’ the chile’s head wid foolishness. Settin’ her up for hurt and a life a struggle. That she’d be the only colored girl in the whole state so what good would that do her? Desta really does think she’s a queen, what wid her money from The Academy, this school she runs. Thinks it’s her right to boss Ruth and me ‘roun’ ‘cause she got us out the White Rose. Ruth sews her fancy nightgowns an’ petticoats an’ I make frogmore stew an’ potatah rolls light as clouds. Sure, we get money in our pockets from her, but Queen Desta act too high an’ mighty. When she falls, it’s gonna hurt harder than a Harlem sidewalk.
She a prideful woman. Wants folks owin’ her ten times more-n what she put out in the firs’ place.
Desta Willoughby set us workin’ in her Harlem brownstone. Gave us wages so we could get and keep our own places over at that real nice buildin’ on St. Nicholas Place. Numbah 66. But Queen Desta wants a big say in how Ruth raises Belle Ada like she the chile’s granny. Ruth ain’t havin’ it. Thas why I keep a fire lit under what Johnnie Scott wanted for his family. My boy loved Ruth like a cat does nip. His daughter woulda been the only thing in this worl’ he’d a died for widout a whimpah. An’ Belle Ada got a blood granny. Me. Missy House. I ain’t ‘bout to let nobody take whas mine. Or let Ruth forget the love a her life. Go back to the White Rose on hands and knees before I let that happen.
Ruth and me been havin’ talks ‘bout goin’ back to Miss Alice for years. But Ruth was gettin’ real comfortable in her uptown life. There was money in the bank. Belle Ada doin’ good in public school (before she begged and pleaded to take some art classes at The Academy and Ruth gave in, wid me tellin’ her, over and over, it was a bad idea). And plenty men sniffin’ at her skirts now she’s near sixteen. Some worth a glance. Mos’ not. All of it ‘cause Miss Desta done right by us. Ruth would say this, kinda sorrowful, like it was the bes’ kinda slavery. Well, I been a slave, and not a single thing good ‘bout it. All Ruth know is Jim Crow. So when this give-up come out her mouth, I’d turn my head in the worse kinda shame. Feel Johnnie Scott in my heart. Vexatious in his grave.
And now Ruth’s dead, too.
Queen Desta’s makin’ quite the hullabaloo today what wid Harriet L. Thomas tendin’ to the body and all the extras. Wouldn’t surprise me to see a lil engraved announcement card in the casket say Paid for by Desta Dahlia Willoughby, though that would be coarse, even for her. Everybody there’ll know who’s footin’ the bill for everythin’.
But I know whose hide this’ll all come outta. My granchile’s. ‘Cause somebody gotta take in a almos’ 16 year ol’ orphan, and I’m too ol’ now to do it by myself. Need somebody take care a me. So I’ma go back to Belle Star where I can lie wid my son in death. (In my dreamin’ Mr. G. Reaper’s started peekin’ at me – a big, beautiful smile on his face – so I know he gonna take me soon.)
Queen Desta’s gonna claim Belle Ada as payment in kind ‘cause she ain’t got no chile no other way. Chose makin’ money over babies. Other folks ‘roun’ heah could take her, but who got the gumption to war wid Desta on the chile’s behalf? And I hear Miss Alice took the double pneumonia this pas’ autumn-time and died, shutterin’ the White Rose.
Somebody at the funeral gonna inherit the bes’ thing my son evah did in his short life.
Maybe Belle Ada’ll make it to Denver someday. And be happy.
Buddy Barnstable
When I was a pimp in East St. Louis, Illinois everythin’ was clear. Everybody played by the rules. We handled every kinda trouble like gentlemen.
Women, black and white, let their eyes feast on me like I was angel food cake that my Ruth Brown, in Harlem, only got to peck crumbs from. I wore handmade ankle-high boots back then, with fitted waistlines in sack suits. I Brilliantined my hair into slick waves a gnat couldn’t land on safe. God knows I looked good. But He know, too, how it hurts rememberin’ what ain’t mine no more, my face wrecked like it is. Rememberin’ how Dan Gardner and me usedta jockey in the clotheshorse races. Him always jus’ beatin’ me what with his pricey Jew tailor and fabrics from Lisbon, Paris and Rome. My stuff off the rack at Kuppenheimer’s.
Yes sir, Daniel Powell Gardner – the last name at the uppity law office Elliott, Fitzhugh, Bates, Benton & Gardner – lived across the river, in St. Louis, Missouri, and his name on the deed first to 66 St. Nicholas Place, Harlem U.S. of A., where I’m the Superintendent now.
Gardner had him a sideline money maker back in 1914, runnin’ more whores in the Black Valley of East St. Louis than I did. Gardner had a knack for profitin’ off simple human need, but didn’t have the smarts to keep his fingers out the honey pot. When he come on me “by chance,” at Clyde’s Haberdashery one fine spring mornin’, and got all coy ‘bout my best girl, Desta Willoughby, I knew Dan Gardner was greedy and a pure damn fool.
Desta and Dan usedta meet in the Yellow Room at the Van Browen Hotel, Monday and Thursday, three to four. This lasted for more than two years leadin’ up to her extra special birthday gift to me in April ‘17. Buddy Barnstable gets himself a job at the Winger meat processin’ plant! Come to find out later that Winger’s a extra special client of Gardner’s law office.
Then the riot happens.
I lose my face.
Desta moves to Chicago.
Years later Gardner, still cow-eyed over Desta, leaves her a fortune in a life insurance policy. She uses the money to set up a whorehouse in Harlem for extra special men with good breedin’ and deep pockets. Years after that, Desta fixes me up with another job; this time at 66 St. Nick.
Word is Desta found out the buildin’ was Gardner’s and bought it after he died, but can’t bring herself to live there. That’d be jus’ like the Desta Dahlia Willoughby I know. She musta thought a little kindly on dear old Dan after all. Behind them brains of hers, she’s a great big softie.
Dan Gardner has paid me three different times: first for Desta, then for Desta and butcherin’, now through Desta for mindin’ the buildin’. Keepin’ the tenants happy. Desta’s slick. Been robbin’ Gardner blind for years, puttin’ her hand in his cookie jar, grinnin’ that extra special way of hers he never said No to. She let the late Mister Gardner, Esquire think she owed him the air she breathed, and he never said Boo, but I know better. Desta take care of Desta, and her own. That’s what I liked ‘bout her from the start.
I know she’ll give her dressmaker of many years, Ruth Brown – the woman I loved who was too blind to see it and, even if she could, was way too broken to love me back – a glorious funeral today, Dan Gardner’s money gleamin’ in every particular.
Eveline Barnstable
There’s a before and after wid me and Desta Willoughby.
The before is when my brother, Buddy, was workin’ her tail in East St. Louis before the riot happened July, 1917.
The after when she become the Headmistress of her Academy – one part schoolhouse, other part cat house – my baby, East, doin’ her book learnin’ there.
Before Desta seemed like she was, maybe, four or five steps up from guttersnipe. Come up to East St. Louis from Cairo, one of Madame X’s girls. Grapevine has it the price of her cherry paid for some tonic her mama wouldn’t take (when she found out how it was bought.) Mama died of sickness and shame. Madame X knew the Cairo trade wouldn’t turn ‘round from that kinda jinx, so Desta got shipped to Buddy, Madame X bein’ the chief conductor of the underground Pussy Express in Illinois.
Before Desta had a hard time, at first. Even though she had those natural good looks make any man, or woman, glance twice (and the body to go wid it), girl didn’t know how to use her gifts. Too much the tomboy and Aunt Rosa hadn’t made her first visit yet, hot water bottle and bleed rags in tow. Girl wanted to climb trees and roughhouse wid boys. Acted almost scared of grown men. I axed Buddy if he knew anythin’ ‘bout her cherry pickin’ ‘cause if the man treated Desta like dirt that would explain it. Madame X told Buddy a Catholic priest did it to her in the confession booth. Called it the Sacrament of the Holy Rose. Desta’s people bein’ so devout, Madame X thought a religious ceremony make the situation easier for the girl to take in, in a manner of speakin’.
Buddy wound up wid a handful. Come to me all the time axin’ Do somethin’ wid her, for God sake! Like I’d know what to do wid some homesick confused twelve year old. Buddy twenty-two and me just seventeen our own selves. Him learnin’ his trade, me not yet learnin’ the Old Ways of conjure from Najay, but doin’ white folks’ wash all over St. Louis. Few days here, few weeks there. Didn’t want to be tied to any one family. Had freedom to go where I want, when I want, buildin’ a good reputation ‘long the way. Why would I traipse over the river to babysit? I told Buddy NO. Time and again.
But one day, he lef’ Before Desta on the back doorstep of the Henry Chesters, me almost tumblin’ to the ground wid the wet weddin’ dress of the new Mrs. Chester in my arms. Lucky for me Before stood up quick which broke my fall, velvet and satin hangin’ off her like clumps of tinsel on a Christmas tree. I couldn’t help but laugh when her brown hands and big eyes popped outta all that white. By then I was takin’ stock of the dress. Hopin’ it hadn’t got ripped ‘cause I can’t do a damn thing wid needle and thread.
Stop shakin’, girl. Dress looks fine. Help me get it on the line.
No, no! Put one of these silk patches over the part you gonna pin. That way no wood color gets on the dress from it bein’ damp, and the pin pinch be more on the patch than the dress.
It’s a sideways hang so the hem and train ain’t in the grass for stain and bug crawl.
What Buddy call you, girl?
-- What Mama named me. DESTA! If you please, ma’am.
Addin’ those last four words – after a quiet damn near buzzin’ wid me thinkin’ Who the hell she think she talkin’ to? – made the difference ‘tween me draggin’ her wid me to do somethin’ honorable, and bootin’ her behind back to Buddy wid insult and injury.
There was somethin’ ‘bout the child. Somethin’ I could feel was dangerous. Would make her a bad fit wid Buddy’s other two girls, ‘sides bein’ so young. Before Desta’d do what she was told to, no matter how awful, and not make a peep, but she’d tally it up. Inside. And when the bad ‘mounted to more than the good, when she was ready, the girl would get even wid whoever piled the most bad on her plate. I could see it in those eyes. The willin’ness to bide her time. Hold a grudge a long, long time. I didn’t want my brother to be somebody she’d hunt.
After Desta, though, was a total and complete surprise.
She was elegant in a no-showoff way. It was clear she had money, but somethin’ even more precious. A kinda settledness, I guess you’d call it, like she’d made peace wid herself in a way she hadn’t planned on, and kep’ goin’. That settle, whatever it was, she wouldn’t have known how to dream in East St. Louis. All this in how she carried herself. How she got up from behind that just right-sized oak desk, polished mirror bright, and walked over to me. Shook my hand. Smiled like she meant it, makin’ me feel welcomed and remembered, though I doubt she fit my face back to those long gone years.
Nothin’ ‘bout After Desta chased anythin’. It wasn’t that she had no wants. Like every woman, she had plenty. But she had enough, too, and couldn’t chase if she wanted to. Carryin’ that settle had to make her sweat, and sweatin’ through life is a burden all your own. Can’t anybody help. Grown women we both are now, I could tell she’d sweat plenty. Paid some awful price or two. And that ever so faint mustiness don’t ever wash or wear off.
Women can smell sweat on each other. Some better at it than others. The sweat of heartache’s a mix of old bacon grease and puddled rainwater too ornery to dry up, wid a pinch of Aunt Rosa monthly blood never got washed away. It’s the smell of what’s got no more use. Any woman say she can’t smell this is lyin’.
I’m in that better than others group, wid all kinda smells, ‘cause of the Old Ways I learned from Najay.
I wasn’t in After Desta’s company two minutes – my ‘pointment come ‘bout by the ad I saw for The Academy in the Amsterdam News – when her sweat cut through the Tabac Blond perfume she was wearin’. After Desta musta taken up smokin’ since the tobacco and leather in Tabac Blond draw women who smoke like flowers do bees. Bet she puffed on the sly. And didn’t use no holder. Too fussy. And fussy did not apply to the woman I was lookin’ at.
Her left hand ring finger was bare, but the pearl on the next one as pretty as the two in her ears. Hair in a bun. Scalp covered in hot comb waves didn’t shine more than they needed to. She wore a navy blue V-neck dress, wid pearl colored dots on it, over a white undershirt. Her titties moved too easy, though, and that bothered me. Desta Willoughby lookin’ queenly. Wid no bra on. She had white patent leather T-straps on her feet, even though we two weeks from Memorial Day, which told me After Desta would wear white in December if she felt like it, so I should jus’ get usedta Desta wid no bra. It was who she was now. Her voice was deep. Throaty. Maybe from cigs or settle. She spoke slow, any hint of colored person wiped out and, believe me, it usedta be there.
So many people lef’ East St. Louis after the riot, but wherever Desta Willoughby went was a whole lot farther than most.
Buddy’s scars are on his face. After Desta totes hers inside. I can smell ‘em. Not the details, of course, but the fact they there. She covers ‘em up pretty slick in good breedin’ she learned somewhere. Her Najay was white. Most likely some man, well-to-do, started out prince. Wound up nightmare. Lef’ his mark on her soul in a way she can’t, or won’t, get free of. For every conjure I do for love I do three times more for pay back. Half ‘spected to bargain wid After Desta that way. Get a break on the tuition for my East walk past The Academy’s front door. But I was surprised again. My baby gets her schoolin’ free ‘cause she’s Buddy’s niece. I am grateful. And got sense enough to nurse my hurt feelin’s in private.
Before Desta thought a whole lot more of my brother than me. I didn’t look for this to sting, but it did. Honest to God, it don’t matter. He can have Before. I’ll take After. Evens out in the end.
But I make East drink a tea of moon water, mint and rosemary every day before she go to school. Keep her safe from any After Desta’s juju.
East Barnstable
Miss Desta runs my school. The Academy for Inspired and Striving Girls. Only has four grades: seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth. I don’t think Miss D (what we call her behind her back) wants to deal wid real elementary or high school age girls. The first bunch needs too much looking after, the second thinks they’re close enough to grown – can get away wid anything – so they sass and show off and be mean just to be Queen for the Day. Nothin’ but girl stupid, you ask me. Miss D thinks so, too. Told me right off – like she does all the new seventh graders – she believes in “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Not ‘cause it’s from the Bible (where most grown-ups’ rules come from), but ’cause some poet, Sam Butler, put it on paper ‘bout a love affair being like a child. Miss D loves poetry. (What she thinks ‘bout love affairs is none of my business.) She has the saying cross-stitched, framed and hanging on the wall of her office so you can’t miss it. You gotta feel real sorry for whichever girl has the bad luck to sit on the Torture Chair, right across the desk from the cross-stitch, Miss D smiling – like she can’t wait to chew the meat on your bones – when she says, My fingers put in every stitch. Your gut gets full of slosh at the thought of her pouty lips smacking happy on your juices she’s sucking off those spider-leg fingers the second you’ve left the room. Maybe not even before you’ve closed her door.
Nobody messes wid Miss D if they’ve got any sense.
And if I had any sense I’d take a switch or two to that bootlegger Tobias Derowitz, speaking of love affairs, rods and children. He’s plugged me up wid a baby only I know ‘bout and want like a dog does fleas. But that’s not the point right now. You wanna know ‘bout Miss D.
Nobody likes her. Not even the teachers.
I get the feeling 1) she doesn’t like girls, and 2) running a school isn’t what she wants to be doing. Not that I care ‘bout any of this anyway. Other things on my mind. I’m just making an opinion. But if it was me, I’d be on it. This Academy isn’t so big that feelings, good or bad, got places to hide in. Miss D has to have some kinda notion. But she’d eat fried rat on creamed boogers before she’d let on to anybody, or do something ‘bout the situation. Grown-ups can be like that. Stirring the stew. Worrying over it. Adding a pinch of this or that, trying to fix what is nothin’ but mess in a pot. Total waste of time.
My Ma calls folks like these Secret Keepers.
Miss D’s a Secret Keeper the likes of which I’ve never seen, but I’m only thirteen and only know Harlem. Miss D’s older than dirt and usedta live in Paris and Vienna. Or was it Venice? Anyhow, Ma – who’s a conjure woman – has been making me learn her Old Folks stupid Old Ways since it looked like I had a brain in my head. I didn’t wanna, but that’s not the point either. What is, is I can sniff outta Secret Keeper when one’s close by, and Headmistress Willoughby is hiding so much stuff she’s gonna bust out her skin sooner, not later. Could be one or two secrets with lotsa parts to ‘em. Could be a whole sack full. I’m not grown into my power enough yet, Ma says, to tell the difference, but that Miss D smell of marigold and parsley, over dirty socks and potato wid too many eyes? Was the parsley gave her away. It’s covering big stink.
What she hiding?
Ma said, There’s a niggah in her woodpile. Guaranteed.
Uncle Buddy said, Bet there’s two or three. And laughed like he usually don’t ‘cause it makes his face hurt.
Belle Ada Brown, my best friend, said, She shot somebody dead over money.
Miss Boots, my art teacher, said, Never mind Headmistress Willoughby. Where’s your drawing from our field trip to the Met, Miss Barnstable?
Tobias said, She’s never gotten her revenge on someone who hurt her. And she knows she blew her best and only chance.
Whatever it is can’t be as bad as me telling Ma ‘bout my flea-bit dog.
Tobias Derowitz
Yeah, I know Desta Willoughby.
She runs the school my sweetie, East Barnstable, goes to.
Same school Belle Brown, her best friend, goes to. Belle the only child of Ruth Brown.
Ruth Brown’s the one a lotta people will pay respects to at Harriet Thomas’ funeral home in a couple days.
A funeral Willoughby’s paying for, Ruth being her seamstress.
Wouldn’t be a funeral if I hadn’t knifed her.
Had to put something right between me and my boss, Meyer Lansky, so it got done.
Ruth was a good woman. Big-hearted. Had a deep, deep way of listening. Made you feel like she’d walked a desert in your own damn shoes. A little high strung sometimes, though. Like a cat trying to claw out a gunnysack it knows is headed to the Harlem River. But when she and I laid hands on each other, shoes and gunnysack never existed. The world went quiet then, as if there was no noise left to make. We’d gathered it all up and blasted it to the moon and were left clean somehow. Hurts and scars gone from body and soul. Christ! Whatta lay!
Hope Willoughby has money, after the funeral bills, to cover the shipment I have for her. The boats in from St. Pierre and Miquelon only had Remy Martin, Canadian Club, Vat 69 and Gordon’s. Just one case each for Willoughby. Usually there’s two apiece, minimum, but a storm took a lotta boats to the bottom of the North Atlantic. All us rumrunners taking big hits.
Willoughby’s clients will haveta make do until the next boats. Two weeks, give or take.
Hell, as long as her girls keep opening their legs and tooting up their asses, those johns would drink Miss Harriet’s embalming fluid and not give a shit. Not that Willoughby would ever stoop that low. It’s important to her to run a quality house. She’s a quality woman Ruth Brown was damn lucky to work for.Ruth knew it, too. Told me plenty times. I always do my extra best where Willoughby’s concerned. ‘Cause when Willoughby’s happy, East’s happy, and I stay happy.
Smart one, that Willoughby. Teaching girls and running whores outta the same building. Different floors. Day work, night work. Saturday nights get classy. Hors d’oeuvres and blues music (sometimes a singer) and colored waiters in white gloves. The johns in white tie and midnight blue dinner jackets, outfits complete with hip flask and cane.
Money always in circulation ‘round Willoughby.
More than enough happy to go around.
Roy Gift Good
I don’t know her at all. I wonder how many people, if any, really do.
Madame Willoughby – as us paying customers know her – seems more an animal than people person. Cats, dogs, sure. Not that I’ve ever seen her with one, but birds, too. Farm animals, even. Not that Madame comes from country – God only knows where her roots are – but, judging by how she’s decorated the place, she’s got a thing for critters.
The five rooms for clients have animal themes. With French names. La Salle des Chiens (The Dog Room), Cat, Horse, Bird and Cow Rooms. And not just alley cats or mutts, either. I’m talking about African cats. Black racing stallions. Peacocks and swans. German shepherds and those low to the ground dogs look like a frank on four legs. Red cows, brown cows, black and white splotched cows. Not on the wallpaper or bed covers, but needle-pointed pillows. Ashtrays. Figurines. Cups and saucers. Rugs. Paintings. Water jug and basin. Some combo of any of these in every room.
But as tacky as this might sound, when you’re in the room – with this gorgeous black or brown or café au lait girl, covered by a silk robe with a swan or leopard or milk cow stitched across the back – it all fits. As welcome as a glowing fireplace after you’ve been out in the cold. The energy of the room, how it makes you feel warm or excited or in control or wanting to be taken out of yourself, has something to do with the critter whose room it is. I’m sure of it. The girl becomes an extension of that, not that she turns into a cow or anything, but she takes on the spirit of the animal and, whatever guard you had up going in the room, comes down in seconds. It’s the strangest thing. You know what you’re fucking isn’t one hundred percent human, but that doesn’t matter when you know it should. All you want is more of this feeling of pure release. Of being Other Than how the world sees you, or how you see yourself. Sounds loopy, I know, but it’s true, and rare is the man who doesn’t come back to Madame Willoughby’s first chance he gets.
I’m a regular. There after every run I finish on the 20th Century Limited, inbound from Chicago, where I’m a waiter. I do this in the summer to make money so I can keep studying to be an architect.
The Dog Room is my favorite. The only one without wallpaper. It’s painted the color of biscuit tops and the bed covers are a swirl of caramel and beef gravy browns over meringue white sheets even more deluxe than the ones we use on the train. The frank dog is stitched on a pillow that’s a great back support for the overstuffed chair in the corner. The German shepherd stands proud on the water jug. Has just a face on the bottom of the wash basin, but it’s a dignified profile for a dog. There’s a painting, on the wall between the two windows draped in heavy, deep rose-colored fabric, of men on horseback leading a pack of hounds on a hunt. Always makes me feel a little sorry for the fox.
Mademoiselle Arlene, black as midnight, stays, sits, fetches and rolls over. Would wag her tail if she had one, but I know better than to make her beg. She snarled at me once and I’ve never forgotten it. Made me think badger or wolverine. We haven’t had a disagreement since. Arlene is loyal, kind and sweet to my tongue.
I may not know one thing about Desta Willoughby, but I sure am grateful to her.
Belle Ada-Ruth Brown
All the girls have to call her Miss Willoughby at school (Queen D when she’s not around), but I also knew her as Miss Desta from Mama. Mama had to call her that at work. A room that was the old kitchen pantry in Miss Desta’s house, but got a wall knocked out of it and a window put in so Mama could look at the back sides of other brownstones on the back side of the block. Sometimes a lost breeze rolled by or a pigeon sat on the sill before heading to somewhere pretty. Queenie (what Mama and I called her) changed the pantry into the “sewing lounge” (what Queenie calls it) when she had workmen in making the kitchen “more accommodating” for Aunt Missy. Aunt Missy – not blood to me, but a distant relation some way to my dead father – does all the cooking and baking and canning and preserving. Mama did the dressmaking. It’d been like this since I could remember and I’ll be sixteen in April.
Miss Willoughby is the Headmistress of my school, The Academy.
Queenie also runs what Mama called a “gentleman’s social club” on the third floor of her house Thursday through Sunday nights. School is on the second floor Monday through Friday. The main floor has the “public rooms,” including the kitchen and “sewing lounge” in the back that no gentlemen see. The basement is where Queenie lives. People in the neighborhood call Queenie’s place The Brownstone and talk about it somewhere between the cat’s meow and the Devil’s Lair. Mama told me not to listen to street talk so I didn’t. She said, “You doin’ better at The Academy than you ever would at P.S. 346, so count your blessin’s, Scottie.” (My Daddy’s name was Johnnie Scott. He died before I was born.)
Aside from seeing Miss Willoughby standing in front of her office door – whacking this little Chinese gong three times, with a littler mallet, for us to change classrooms every hour – I have nothing to do with her. But East, my best friend, has had detention in the Dungeon with her. Said Queen D raised her arms up high as they would go, put metal cuffs on both wrists and latched the cuffs to short chains attached to the wall. East had to stand like that for an hour. “Most unfortunate” for her if she had to pee. Miss Willoughby said, “This is what our ancestors suffered when they came here across the Middle Passage.” Living history detention she called it. One of many “instructive” ways Miss Willoughby keeps order at The Academy.
Mama’s dealings with her told a whole different story.
On those nights she asked me to take care of her hands, I listened to her like each word was treasure, and I was the chest she wanted it locked away in. I washed them in warm water with castile soap then rubbed ointment on them made of olive oil, beeswax, crushed peppermint and birch oil (the ointment made by East’s mother, a conjure woman). Then I got cotton gloves out of the two hundred degree oven and pulled them over her hands, making sure each finger could flex and straighten without making Mama flinch. The whole thing took about a half hour. It was the most special time we had. It’s when we got close, giving Mama some let-go and me some get-in. I started seeing how complicated being a woman in the world is.
***
Mama said things like –
“Queenie went to the doctor today. When she came back she axed Missy to make some macaroni and cheese. With bacon, green pepper, onion and garlic. Enough to last her at least four days.”
And,
“A letter came in the mail from some law office in Midtown. I don’t know what it said, but Queenie held it in her hand all the while I was fittin’ her for the new flannel pajamas she wants for winter. Letter in one hand, glass of Canadian Club in the other.”
And,
“Queenie and Mozelle got in a catfight today. They only do that when they’re drunk. Feelin’ sorry for themselves when they have nary a reason for pity. Naw, I didn’t see. Bad enough hearin’ thuds and screechin’. Lord knows I hate the sound of women screamin’. Calls too much attention. Ax for help that never, ever, comes.”
And,
“Somethin’ really peculiar happened when I stuck Queenie with a pin. Course it was an accident. Had my mouth ready to spit all my sorries when she said, no liquor on her breath, Shush. I know you didn’t mean it. But I want you to do something for me. Scottie, I’m lookin’ at her – puzzlement all over my face – ‘cause she axed me to stick her again. Ovah and ovah ‘til she told me to stop. I lost count how many times that pin went in. Ruinin’ this beautiful piece of yellow lisle I’m makin’ a blouse from. Pinpricks. Blood. Queenie tellin’ me to jab her every now and then, too. Musta gone on for fifteen minutes and she never made a sound the whole time.”
And,
“Queenie axed me what I miss most, missin’ your Daddy.
Now I been knowin’ Desta Willoughby for near thirteen years and, in all that time, she’s axed me ‘bout Johnnie Scott maybe three times. And never ‘bout my feelin’s for him.
This time she was lookin’ out the window. My back turned to her mindin’ some little problem with the Singer. The other times she axed ‘bout Johnnie she was right up on me, nosy, like she had a right to get in my business, but the questions were triflin’. His favorite color. What his work was. Her bein’ ’cross the room this time, not even lookin’ my way, made me know she was really interested in what I was gonna say. So interested, she didn’t want her face, or any little noise she might make, give her away. Whatever I said, Scottie, she was gonna tote up next to her own feelin’s ‘bout somebody she’d loved and lost. Don’t ax me how I knew this. I just did. So I let the question hang in the air a while, floatin’ ‘til it found a place to land unbroken, and I said, His love for me. That’s what I’ll miss fo’ever. I kept fiddlin’ with the sewin’ machine, lettin’ Queenie keep her privacy. Had time to fix it, and put all my work away, and Queenie’s still lookin’ out that window. Hadn’t moved an inch. I almost went ovah to put a hand on her shoulder. Give it a squeeze. But I stayed put. Just said, See you in the mornin’, Miss Desta, and walked away. She still lookin’ through a dirty window at somethin’ only she could see.”
And,
“It looks like the two of us goin’ to Atlantic City the first weekend in August, on your Uncle Buddy’s nickel. Queenie said, He wanted me to make it seem like the trip was coming out of my purse and I told him, Sure, but you need to know it’s not.
Buddy’s been through hell five times over. Only thing left to him is his pride. That, plus being mule-headed since the day he was born, keeps him from owning up to this extravagance he can’t afford.
He’s scared to tell you how much he loves you, Ruth, because he doesn’t want your pity. His face is ruined and he believes you can’t see past that. It’d be an extraordinary woman who could. So he does what he can, hoping that doing for you feels the same, to you, as loving the best that’s left of him. And, yes, I’ll pay you while you’re gone so you and the child enjoy yourselves. Bring him back some salt water taffy. Tell him about the fun you had. And spare no details. That’ll make him happy. He deserves that much, at least.”
***
Seems like whoever Desta Willoughby is, isn’t easy to figure out. She’s got so many different faces how can anyone know, for sure, that the one they’re looking at is the real one? Why can’t she just live with the face that feels best? Why she have so many, anyway? What makes her so special? If that’s special, I’m glad Mama wasn’t. I saw Ruth Brown’s face every day. It smiled and laughed, cried sometimes, but it didn’t change so much I had to stop and make sense out of flat-out strange.
Mama said, You have so much time to be grown. Just be a child.
So I’m not going to waste another second thinking on Queenie.
I trust Miss Boots – Myrtle Rose to me – to do that now that Mama’s gone.
Myrtle Rose Boots
Ever see a turkey peck nits off a goat?
That sums up Desta Willoughby and me. I’m the turkey. She’s the goat. I loathe myself for this dependency.
But you try being a colored woman painter in New York City in 1930 and see how far you get. When there is the rare gallery show – where your work has to compete with that of your black brethren for whatever scant wall space is assigned you by the white proprietor of the downtown venue – who pays attention? Who buys? I always do better when I show uptown. When people who run with Carl Van Vechten (or hope to) either appreciate the work, or pity the starving artist. Once I made it two whole months off a sale, but that was back in ’26 and times have changed, thanks to Wall Street. Every working artist I know – not part of a steady income earning marriage, or sponsored by a bona fide patron where sex is not part of the arrangement – has a job or two. When there’s three, since Prohibition affords ample opportunity, that third gig is illegal.
I have no truck with waywardness or hoodlums. It’s tough enough out here. I keep my associations above board and varied so no one can quite put their finger on me. I live in my Greenwich Village studio, work in Harlem, play on Long Island, in Jersey and at the Cape, have lovers in Queens and the Bronx. I’m no fan of Brooklyn and detest Staten Island. Roaming suits me. New paintings grow out of me when I wander.
All this to say Desta has not one thing to do with my real life except give me income that makes my real life possible.
I teach art appreciation at her Academy, the curriculum a mix of studio art with art history at alternating grade levels. If the girls last all four years (most don’t), they’ve acquired a technical facility and an intellectual one. I do my best to bring Beauty into the lives of my students, but whether I succeed I don’t know.
What I am certain of is the enmity I bear Desta Willoughby.
By the end of the ninth grade she decides which of two paths each girl will pursue in tenth grade; the professional track (beautician, secretary) or that of courtesan. That final year at The Academy provides an immersion in all the requisite skills needed to prepare each girl for her sentence.
Turning girls into Negro copies of Japanese geishas in ukiyo-e paintings is repugnant, but I aid this transformation because I need paint and food and a safe place to lay my head at night. I, too, am a whore.
But I’ll be damned if I let Desta turn Belle Ada-Ruth Brown into one.
She is my Beauty. The one my body and soul crave as simply as plants do water and light. I tend her. I’ve watched her begin to bloom. She feels the call to a life of art, of passion and experience that is hers to discover in all its glories of color and texture. She is as I once was. I battled for years without a champion. Belle Ada won’t have to. She commands my courtesy and respect as a woman and fellow artist in arms. She will lack for nothing – as I once lacked everything – if I have any say in the matter.
I will hurt anyone who tries to keep Belle Ada from her happiness. This is my most vital work.
Terrence Shedd
Desta Willoughby is a money-hungry, liver-lipped bitch thinks she’s on the stroll ‘cause of her Academy. Everybody knows it’s just a front for her bein’ a broke down whore couldn’t get any action if she put it on the slab for free. Always yippin’ like a goddamn poodle ‘bout the well-to-do Miss Annes and Mister Charlies she parties with at the Savoy, Log Cabin and Radium Club, and she’s not one stitch different from your everyday handkerchief-head, got all his fancy book learnin,’ runnin’ his mouth like he’s Upper East Side white. Everybody knows that don’t mean shit the second he sets foot outta Sugar Hill. She knows it, too.
Desta Willoughby gaves all her butt sprung clothes to my woman, Ruth Brown, to keep. Like Ruth wanted that stuff ‘stead of the store-bought I brought her from Alexander’s or Gertz. Some pieces Ruth’s had to patch a little here and there before they wound up in the charity box at St. Boniface. It usedta embarrass Ruth to wear them rags in the street.
Any stupid reason sets Desta on parade all over 125th Street, draped in some new outfit Ruth damn near killed herself over, lookin’ like the Queen a lotta people call her – and she thinks she is – but, lemme tell ya, when she dies God Almighty will park her Queen-ass in Beluthahatchie, nex’ stop after Hell, and not think twice about it. Hope she got the right clothes to strut ‘round in down there.
Naw, I don’t like her. Makes the niggah in me get ugly, and it takes an awful lot for me to rise to this kinda foolishness. But, to be honest? It’s more than not likin’ her. I wouldn’t piss on Desta Willoughby if she was on fire.
Desta Dahlia Willoughby
So, now a few good citizens have had their say.
What do you know about me that could be called true?
I’d venture to guess you know more about them. After all, every speaker’s intention was to talk about themselves all along. I was just an easy provocation to set tongues wagging.
My mother – who claimed Pueblo blood on her mother’s side – used to tell me, as a child, to pay no attention to stories told about me, whether they hurt or not, for it is human nature to use storytelling to make sense of the world. This is what makes us different from the many-leggeds we share the Earth with, and it was this learning that has served me best in life. I am tolerant. Patient. Though I still work on forgiveness with every breath I take. Mother shared many stories about Grandmother Spider, creator of the world, who was responsible for the teaching of humankind and I understand, through this, how strong the ties are that bind us. Always.
I spoke only to Daniel of this. He and I are bound to each other beyond death.
The world is a spider’s web. Each filament – each good citizen – is bound by the edge of the web, living life in a particular place at a specific time. Harlem gives this web its tensile strength, yet each filament lends flexibility, too, enabling the web to battle wind and rain.
All the strands lead to me in the center, aware of everything around me.
I was called forth from the Earth, as we all are, to do specific work. Some may identify me with certain pursuits, but what of it? I run a school. Provide comfort. I watch and remain silent, moving only to repair my web and stave off hunger.
What do people know about spiders?
That they can’t stand them, is all.
Cheryl J. Anthony, a two-time recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, does not have an MFA. A long-time summer student at various locales, she has studied with Lee K. Abbott and James Alan McPherson among others. This work is the result of an exercise for the writer to better realize a character in her work-in-progress, Never, a novel-in-stories set in Harlem in 1930. Ms. Anthony is a New York City native.