Little Scarlet

22

Hello?” a black woman said in a gruff but not unfriendly tone.

“Juanda there?” I asked.

As the words came out of my mouth my heart twitched and my stomach turned. I had convinced myself that I was calling the fine young woman because I needed her help. And as I look back on the situation I realize that I really did need her. But there was more than that to the call. I loved Bonnie and had no intention of changing my situation but still I yearned to be in the presence of the chattering young woman who lied to save me and then led me to freedom.

“Hello?” she said in my ear.

“Juanda?”

“Mr. Rawlins.”

“Easy,” I said. “Call me Easy.”

“I was hopin’ you would call,” she said. There was no pretense in this woman. She wanted to know me and she let me know it.

“Yeah. Well, I think I might need some more help from you if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. You gonna come pick me up?”

I gulped and said, “Yeah.”

She gave me her address on a sigh.

I said that I’d be around in the early afternoon.

My next call was to Bonnie.

“Rawlins residence,” she said into the receiver.

“Were you ever thinking that we’d get married?” I asked without preamble.

Her response was silence.

“I didn’t mean to drop it on you, baby,” I said. “I mean . . . I guess I feel a little crazy out here.”

“Are you okay, Easy?”

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think that white boy killed Nola.”

“That really isn’t up to you, is it?”

“No. But if I don’t look at it closely I can’t be sure the police will either.”

“Why not? That’s their job.”

“At best their job is keeping the peace,” I said. “And right here the peace will be best served by this white man takin’ the heat.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And if he didn’t kill her, then somebody else did. But the cops won’t care about that. They never worry about exactly who did what. Catchin’ crooks is like herdin’ cattle for them. So what if one or two get away? They’re bound to be caught somewhere down the line. And if they round up an innocent man, they’ll just tell ya that he probably did somethin’ else they didn’t catch him for.”

“But Easy,” Bonnie said.

“What?” I lit up a Lucky Strike.

“You don’t have the kind of resources that the police do. You can’t go out there and find some killer that you know nothing about.”

“You’re right about that, honey. But . . .”

“What?”

“That’s why those people were out there shootin’ and burnin’ and throwin’ rocks. Because they’re sick and tired of knowin’ that they can’t ever get it right. They’re tired’a bein’ told that they can’t win.”

“Did they win?” she asked me.

“They mighta been wrong,” I said. “But at least they tried.”

“Okay.”

It was more than her giving in to my hardheaded ways. She knew that I needed her blessing to go out so far from safety.

“I love you,” we both said together.

After she hung up I slammed the pay phone handset down so hard that it broke in my hand.

I DROPPED BY my office at Sojourner Truth before going to meet Juanda. I had an extra suit of clothes in a locked closet there. It was a rabbit gray two-piece ensemble with a single-button jacket. I also had a cream-colored shirt and bone shoes. I took the clothes down to the boy’s gym, where I showered and shaved, powdered, and dabbed on cologne. There were still a few soldiers and policemen prowling the campus but the aftermath of the riot was winding down.

JUANDA WAS WAITING out in front of her door on Grape Street. She had preened a bit too. She was wearing a white miniskirt and a tight-fitting multicolored striped blouse. She wore no hose or socks and only simple leatherlike sandals. She wore no jewelry and had nothing in her hair.

Juanda’s hair was not straightened, which was rare for Negro women in the ghettos of America at that time. Her hair was natural and only slightly trimmed. There was a wildness to it that was almost pubic.

She smiled for me when I hopped out to open her door.

“That’s another reason I like older men,” she said when we were both seated and on our way.

“What’s that?”

“They remember to be gentlemen even after you kissed ’em.”

“But you never kissed me,” I said.

“Not yet.”

I STARTED DRIVING and Juanda began to talk. She told me about her cousin Byford who had recently come to Los Angeles from Texas by hitchhiking. His mother, Juanda’s mother’s sister, had died suddenly and he was alone in the world.

Juanda’s mother, Ula, had been angry at Byford’s mother for over twenty years. It seems that when their mother died, Ula suspected her sister Elba of having taken their mother’s set of cameos that she’d received from a rich white lady she worked for.

That was why Ula left Galveston, because she couldn’t stand living in the same town as her thieving sister.

The sisters were estranged, so all that Byford, who was only thirteen, knew was that his Auntie Ula lived somewhere in L.A. He stuck out his thumb and made it all the way to southern California, getting rides with young white longhairs mainly.

He found his auntie by walking the streets of Watts asking anybody he met, did they know an Ula Rivers.

“Byford is pure country,” Juanda was saying. “I mean, he go barefoot everywhere and only drink from jelly jars. Sometimes he even go to the baffroom in the backyard if somebody in the toilet an’ he cain’t hold it . . .”

I could have listened to her for weeks without getting tired. She was from down home, Louisiana and Texas. She was more than twenty years my junior but we could have been twins raised in the same house, under the same sun.

I knew many young teens like her who attended Sojourner Truth. But they were children and I harbored the mistaken belief that I had left my rude roots behind. I owned apartment buildings and a dozen suits that cost over a hundred dollars each. But a tight dress on a strong country body along with the prattle that I hadn’t heard since childhood sent a thrill through my heart.

Juanda’s conversation was like home cooking was to me after five years’ soldiering in Africa and Europe. I didn’t stop eating for a week after I got home.

WE HEADED WEST toward Grand Street downtown. There we came to a small hotel called The Oxford. It had a fine restaurant on the first floor called Pepe’s. The maître d’ was a chubby, golden-hued Iranian named Albert who liked me because I once proved that he was in San Diego when his wife’s mother’s house had been robbed. Albert had married a white woman whose parents hated him. He had never experienced racism of that nature before. Being Persian, he disliked many other peoples but never for something as inconsequential as skin color or an accent.

“Mr. Rawlins,” he said, giving me a broad grin.

The room was dim because, like most L.A. restaurants, Pepe’s had no windows. That’s because the sun in the southland was too strong and the heat generated by windows didn’t make for comfortable dining.

Most of the fifteen tables were set for two at lunchtime. The chairs had leather padded arms and seats.

The dining room was nearly full. All of the other diners were white.

Albert led us to a secluded corner table that had a banquette made for two. He didn’t say anything about Juanda’s faux leather or revealing attire. He would have seated us if we were wearing jeans and straw hats.

Once we were comfortable Albert asked, “Is there anything that the lady does not eat?”

“Juanda?” I said, passing the question on to her.

“I don’t like squash or fish,” she told me.

“Then we won’t bring you any,” Albert said.

He went away and Juanda hummed a long appreciative note.

“You come here a lot?” she asked.

“Not often,” I said. “I did Albert a favor once and he told me that I could always eat here free of charge.”

“Don’t the people own the restaurant get mad at that?”

“His brother owns the hotel.”

“Damn.”

“Juanda?”

“Yeah, Easy?” Even the way she said my name exhilarated me.

“Do you know a man named Piedmont?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a man. Big long arms and bug eyes. He used to be a boxer but then he got hurt and by the time he was better he was too lazy to go to the gym anymore.”

“Is he a bad man like Loverboy?”

“No. He okay.”

“Your salads,” Albert said.

He put two plates before us. They were green salads made up of frisée lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cut green beans, and a strong garlic vinaigrette.

Juanda loved it. And I loved her loving it.

“You know how I can get in touch with Piedmont?” I asked as she was eating her third slice of French bread.

“Why?”

“Because I think he might help me find a man I’m looking for.”

“Can I at least finish my salad before you start askin’ me all kinds’a questions?” she asked playfully.

“Sure,” I said.

I watched her concentrate on the lettuce and bread. She ate all of the greens, except for the beans, and then used her bread to mop up the dressing.

Albert must have been watching because as soon as she was through he brought the entrée. It was chicken breasts stuffed with ham and white cheese, accompanied by mashed potatoes under a Cognac sauce.

“Is this to your liking, miss?” he asked Juanda.

“It’s great,” she said.

This elicited a big smile from the round Persian. His hairline was receding and his eyes were cunning but Albert was a man I knew that I could trust.

When he left, Juanda said, “I don’t know if I should tell you about Piedmont.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you might not call me no more.”

She gazed into my eyes and I froze, realizing that what she said was true.

“I live with a woman,” I said.

“Will you kiss me one time?”

“I have two kids,” I continued, “three if you count one that left with her mother eleven years ago.”

“Just one kiss and you have to promise that you will call me one more time at least.”

I wasn’t thinking about Nola or Geneva or Bonnie right then. I leaned over to give Juanda a chaste kiss on the lips but when her fingers caressed my neck I lingered and even drifted to plant a gentle peck on her throat.

When I leaned back Juanda was smiling.

“He live on Croesus only a couple’a blocks from the corner where you met me,” she said. “I don’t know the number but it’s this big ugly red house that got a bright orange door.”

Albert brought crème brûlée for dessert and Juanda was in heaven.

WHEN WE GOT to the car I unlocked her door and opened it.

“You see?” she said. “You’d open the door for me even after we’ve had a dozen kids.”

ON THE RIDE back to her home Juanda talked about her experience in high school. She had gone to Jordan High and got good grades until halfway through the eleventh grade.

“. . . then I messed up,” she said.

“What happened?”

“I met this boy. His name was Dean and he was fiiiiine. Uh. He’d already dropped out but he’d sneak into the schoolyard and stand outside my homeroom door waitin’ for the passin’ period. I’d tell him that I had to go to class but he put his hand on my waist and I couldn’t say no. They finally expelled me.”

“Expelled you? Why?”

“’Cause I wouldn’t listen,” she said. “’Cause I thought I was a woman and they couldn’t treat me like a child no more.”

The riots and Nola Payne’s death and Juanda’s heaving chest were pumping in my veins. I was happy when we got to her block.

I pulled to the curb. She turned to me and touched my forearm.

“You gonna call me again, right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“No more than two days.”

“You still got my number?”

I recited it from memory. That made Juanda grin. She jumped out and I sped off. In the rearview mirror I could see her waving.