Little Scarlet

11

When I got back out on the street the crowd on the corner was gone. That was either a good or a bad thing. Maybe Newell went home to lick his wounds or maybe to get his pistol. But either way, there was no turning back for me then. I went to the apartment building where Nola lived. It was next to a small grocery that had been gutted and torched.

Across the street the Gaynor Furniture store was just a gaping hole flanked by three walls. There was devastation up and down the block and for miles around. For a moment the enormity of what had happened got to me. On TV they had aerial views of this part of the city. It looked like Germany did when we marched in at the end of the war.

It was like a war, I thought. A war being fought under the skin of America. The soldiers were all unwilling conscripts who had no idea of why they were fighting or what victory might mean.

NOLA’S DOOR WAS locked but I had a slender metal slat in a comb sleeve in my pocket. That slat could crack most simple locks and latches. I also had a letter in my pocket that would get me out of jail if it came to that.

The apartment seemed together. There was no overturned furniture or open, tossed drawers. Nola Payne had been a neat woman. Her bed was made and the floors were swept. The dishes were stacked on the kitchen counter because there were no shelves installed. She had a two-burner black wrought-iron stove.

In her bedroom there was a small photograph in a silver frame set upon a two-drawer cabinet. Nola was in the foreground backed up by a tall brown man with a grin on his lips and his arms wrapped around her waist.

In the trash can in the bathroom there were three bloody rags torn from a sheet like the one Bobby used for a curtain.

I couldn’t find another drop of blood anywhere. Then I remembered that she was shot after being murdered.

Nola’s window looked down on Grape Street. The youth in the overalls was back on the corner with three or four others. Juanda wasn’t there. I was angry at myself for noticing her absence. I wasn’t looking for a woman to play around with. Bonnie was my woman. We nearly broke up over her African prince but then we’d decided to stay together.

I intended to honor that decision.

There was no address book among Nola’s things. That was odd. Such a neat and organized woman would have a place where she kept her phone numbers and addresses. I found her purse. She had a wallet with eight dollars and a silver chain with a broken clasp.

I searched for an address book for ten minutes. No one, especially a stranger, would have taken it, so I thought that it must be someplace obvious—staring me in the face. Finally I gave up. Maybe Nola was a loner and didn’t have to jot down the few numbers she called regularly.

As I walked out of Nola’s apartment I was thinking about Juanda’s yellow-and-white dress. It fit her figure perfectly. I speculated that she was in her early twenties and unmarried. Her skin was dark and she had big nostrils. Her face had an animal quality, like a fairy-tale fox.

I shook my head, dislodging the image. But when I walked into the hallway, there she was.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yes, Juanda, what is it?”

“Um.” She was looking at me with hungry eyes. She expected me to embrace her. I was feeling it too but I didn’t give in.

“Yeah?”

“Newell went to get some’a his friends. They drivin’ around now lookin’ for you.”

“How did you find me?”

“I went to ask Bobby.”

“Why didn’t Newell ask him?”

“’Cause I told him that I’d go over and ask and when I told him Bobby didn’t know he believed me.”

I couldn’t seem to take a satisfying breath. The clamor of new love was rattling around in my chest in spite of my intentions.

I knew it was an effect of the riots, that the passion of release had let something go in me. And Juanda was a black woman looking out for me, taking chances for me. She was a poor man’s dream. And I was still, and always would be, a poor man in my heart.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I like you, I guess.”

“I’m parked over on Graham,” I said. “What’s the best way for me to get there without having to kick Newell’s ass again?”

My brave words thrilled Juanda.

“Down out the back way. We could go on a Hundred and Thirteenth Street across Willow Brook and over to Graham.”

“You comin’ with me?” I asked.

“Maybe, if you don’t mind. I need a ride to my auntie’s over on Florence.”

I gestured for her to lead the way and she smiled. Everything we did seemed to be important. I knew that any step I took, either toward her or away, I would regret in the morning.

“WHAT’S NEWELL’S PROBLEM with people?” I asked as we crossed Willow Brook. “I mean, I didn’t start this thing with him.”

“He just jealous.”

“Of me? He don’t even know me.”

“Naw, it’s me,” Juanda said. “He think if he say I’m his girl enough times, it’a wind up bein’ true. But you know I might have other ideas.”

“But what do I have to do with you?”

“You stood up to him and he got embarrassed, that’s all.” Juanda gave me a sidelong glance that made my heart flutter.

I led her to my car.

“This new car is yours?” she asked.

“Yeah. Jump in.”

She squealed and hopped in. For the next few minutes her talk followed a meandering line starting with how her uncle had a car like mine. Her uncle was a plumber for the city, he’d married her mother’s sister twenty years before when Aunt Lovey (whose house we were going to) was only seventeen. Everybody thought it was scandalous for a thirty-eight-year-old man to wed a teenager but Juanda thought that it was okay. She liked older men. But not men like Newell. Newell was always complaining about how people did him wrong, white people mainly, but he didn’t like black bosses, ministers, store owners, or policemen either. When a man got older, she said, he should feel comfortable with the world and not mad because things didn’t go his way. That’s why she liked me. I stood up for myself but still didn’t lord it over people when I had the upper hand. For instance, I could have kicked Newell when he was down but I didn’t. I could have told everybody that I was a friend of Raymond Alexander’s but I didn’t. That’s because I was sure of myself and Juanda liked that, she liked it very much.

It may sound like I’m making light of the young woman in the tight yellow dress but I’m not. I remembered every word she said. They were burned in my memory.

“Do you know Nola Payne?” I asked during a lull in her narrative.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Her aunt Geneva is in some trouble. Nola might be too.”

“Bobby said that Geneva was in jail and that Nola was missin’,” Juanda said.

She crossed her legs and I resisted laying my hand on her bare knee.

“Did Nola have a white boyfriend?”

“Not that I know about,” Juanda said. “I mean, Nola’s a friendly girl and she don’t hate nobody. If she met a nice white man she would go out with him I bet.”

“What about a guy named Loverboy? You know him?”

“Uh-huh. He around. He wear nice clothes and have a nice car but you know he’s a thief and a thief always wind up in jail or another woman’s bed.” It was clear that Juanda judged every man on his prospects as a boyfriend or more. But I didn’t hold that against her. She was a young woman ready to make her nest. A man would have to be an important part of her plans.

“What do you do, Mr. Rawlins?”

She inched over on the seat and I held my breath.

We were driving on Central toward Florence.

Juanda touched my thigh with three fingers.

“You gonna tell me?”

“I own a couple’a apartment buildings here and there,” I answered her honestly, as far as it went.

I was a property owner but I didn’t want to tell her about my job at Sojourner Truth or my little office on Eighty-sixth and Central. I worried that if I opened up that far I’d never be able to close the door on her.

“That’s nice,” she was saying. “My daddy always says that real estate is your best investment because rent is always part of your salary.”

“You know where Loverboy lives?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“I think I might need to talk to him.”

“That’s my auntie’s house right up there,” she said.

I pulled to the curb. A large, light-colored woman was sitting on the front porch. She frowned at my car, obviously not expecting her niece to be inside.

“I got a pencil and paper in the glove compartment,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you write down your number. I might need to ask you some more questions about Loverboy and Nola.”

Juanda’s grin was victorious. She jotted down the number and put it on the dashboard.

“Don’t forget to call me now,” she said.

“I sure won’t.”