Maybe she imagined him. Maybe the excitement of her new job, her new money, and yeah, being a New Negro, had taken a toll. But damn, she could swear on a barrel of Bibles, Ezekiel Bailey—the boy who had vanished, the man she had imagined dead, the love of her life—had just walked into Miss Hattie’s Garden Cafe.
CHAPTER 5
HONOREE
Gasping for breath, Honoree fumbled with the chin strap of her headdress.
Giggly chorus girls rushed by, barreling toward the men lining up to give them a dime to have the girls sit in their laps. Edna Mae poked her in the side, pushing her to join them. Honoree waved her off and faced the wall, praying her body would stop shaking.
She couldn’t let them see her fall apart. Let them see her pain, a pain she could handle if she had a minute to think—with a minute to think, she could handle anything. Even Ezekiel Bailey returning from the grave, or wherever he’d been for the past three years.
It took another minute for her to stop trembling and remove her headdress.
She hurried through the crowd. Glad-handing without touching, nodding without blinking, grinning without smiling—until she reached the storage room behind the bar.
Then she ran.
Racing down the stairwell, speeding along the corridor, stumbling into the dressing room, she slammed the door behind her.
A stab at the button on the wall and the room lit up. She combed her fingers through her hair, tugging on the roots as she examined the room’s dimly lit corners. She had to be sure she was alone.
Satisfied no one was hiding in the dark, she lowered herself stiffly onto a crate as the nausea filled her belly.
What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to walk back upstairs and leave for an audition without looking for him, finding him, and demanding he tell me where he was and why he’s returned?
Miss Dolly’s well-worn alto wended its way from the balcony. The pain-soaked lyrics of Bessie Smith’s “Down Hearted Blues” sunk into the sawdust beneath Honoree’s feet.
I ain’t never loved but three men in my life
My father, my brother and the man that wrecked my life
Honoree hauled her shopping bag from beneath the makeup table and removed her orchestra-length cigarette holder, enamel cigarette lighter, and a pack of Marlboros.
An advertisement in theTribuneclaimed that the ivory-tipped Marlboro made you feel “mild as May.” A springtime lift would be heaven. She lit her cigarette and took a long drag, but the fiery taste sat on her tongue like burnt toast.
She crushed the cigarette on top of the counter. The tiny flames flickered until everything turned to ash—except for the memories.
* * *
Ezekiel’s mother, Prudence, was a member of the Old Settlers Social Club. Generations of her family had lived in Chicago since before the Emancipation.
College-educated and wealthy, she was Negro royalty and blamed the newspapers and the Pullman railroad workers for the “lowlife coloreds” who’d swarmed into the city from down south, fleeing Jim Crow. It was their fault that the whites called the colored neighborhoods in Chicago the Black Belt. It was their fault upstanding Negroes had to live alongside poor, shuffling migrants. It was their fault that roving bands of angry white boys, the athletic clubs, burned down Negro-owned houses when Blacks had dared to move into a neighborhood where they weren’t wanted.
For more than a decade, the Dalcours worked for the Baileys, scrubbing floors, ironing clothes, tending the gardens and Mr. Bailey’s automobiles, and cooking their meals.
“We’re country Negroes, Honoree,” her mother, Cleo, would say. “When we came up north to Chicago from Baton Rouge—your late father’s idea, by the way—we ruined things for decent colored folk like the Baileys. So when you hear Prudence or Titus (she’d never call them by their first names to their faces) talking about ignorant, no-account niggers, they’re talking about us.” Those were the kindest words her mother had to say about the Baileys.
Pregnant during the journey from Baton Rouge, Cleo gave birth to a stillborn child, a girl, a few weeks after they arrived. That’s when Cleo’s heart and tongue turned bitter and any signs of love or kindness ceased, especially toward her living daughter, Honoree.
After her father died, Honoree became desperately attached to Ezekiel—and he to her. When he left for Howard University to become a doctor, he wrote to Honoree every week.
“An Old Settlers’ son will never marry a girl whose father was a sharecropper,” her mother said when she saw the letters. “You’re a poor man’s child, and no matter how light your skin, or how wavy your hair, or how thin your nose, Ezekiel will never want you for his wife. You need a man who shares your roots.”
Honoree’s mother introduced her to a boy from Mississippi. A decent fella, but not royalty like Ezekiel. He knew where he belonged—in church all day on Sundays and at the bloodiest stockyard in the city every other day of the week.
“He takes care of a widowed mother, too,” Cleo explained. “What better boy could there be for you?”
On a Thursday in the summer of 1922, Ezekiel returned from Howard and arrived at Honoree’s front door shortly before sunset. He greeted her mother and invited Honoree to join him on the rooftop. They crawled through the back window, climbed onto the roof, and sat in silence, gazing at the stars. Ezekiel was quieter than he’d been the last time they were together, quieter than she’d ever seen him. A veil of pain clouded his eyes. Something was wrong.
