He thinks I won’t leave him, Rose told herself. Just because I’m pregnant, he thinks I won’t go. He’s got something else coming. I have options. I have my family. I don’t have to put up with this. “I’m not going, Langston.”
“Of course you’re going. We are going, together. We’ll make do.”
“You promised,” she said.
“Things change. Situations change. I had no idea, before the war, that I’d be this strapped for employment. We can’t keep on like this. It’s time to settle down. In our own home. Start our own life.”
“Yes. But not like that. I won’t go. I’m sorry. You go, if you must. I will not.”
“You are my wife.”
“I waited for you when you were in Europe.”
“I wasn’t in Europe! I was at war. I was in the trenches. I shot men, and I was shot at.”
“And you seemed like such a hero to me, at the time. But when you came back, everything changed. You were self-absorbed, you didn’t ask me one question about how I was, or what I had gone through, or what it was like to wait for a husband who might never return home. And do you know what, Langston? You still haven’t asked me any questions. You haven’t given the least indication that you think about me. Now I’m pregnant and you want to march me off to some outpost of A.M.E. illiterates in Missouri. Well, I won’t do it, Langston. I won’t go.”
Langston stood up. He cleared his throat. He placed his hands behind his back, folded them together. Piano, pianissimo, he announced: “You are my wife, Rose Bridges, and I expect you by my side in Independence, Missouri. I’m leaving tomorrow. Our things are packed. I have committed myself to the ministry. You may take a week, if you need it, but I expect you by my side.”
Langston told the members of his congregation — 250 people, mostly old, mostly women, mostly illiterate, some born slaves, some sold on a slave block only a hundred yards from the decrepit A.M.E. church — that his wife would arrive shortly. That she was clearing up their affairs in Baltimore. That she was expecting and wanted to visit the doctor one more time before coming to join him.
“I had fifteen children with no doctor,” muttered the oldest woman in his congregation. Ma’am Sandra was the only way she identified herself. She was in charge of the churchwomen who cleaned Langston’s parsonage. They had swept the floors and painted the walls before his arrival, filled the mattress slips with corn husks, cleaned the soot out of the wood stove, poured lime in the outhouse, stocked his shelves with food.
Langston was paid twenty dollars a month. The parsonage was given free of charge, and the churchwomen promised to supply him with food.
Rose arrived with two trunks. The trunks, and their contents, were likely worth more than the combined wealth of all Langston’s congregation. Rose nearly turned around and left within an hour of her arrival. We are to eat from the hands of these barefooted churchwomen? And you expect me to accept that? Langston told her that he needed her. He said he understood that this was a mammoth step down from the comforts she had known, but that they would climb back up together. Rose agreed to stay the night. She stayed on beyond that. She went into labor in the parsonage. There was no doctor. No running water. Just some old churchwoman who declared herself a midwife and said she had brought most of the congregation into this world, and did indeed seem to know when Rose should hang on and when it was time to push. When the baby’s head popped out, Langston saw the midwife’s hands move like greased lightning toward the silent, squeezed face covered in blood and mucus and vernix. It took him a moment to register that the midwife had just pulled the umbilical cord clear from around the baby’s neck. At that moment, the baby’s squalling filled the room. They named her Millicent.
Rose’s parents were scandalized when they heard of the conditions in which she had given birth. “Leave that heathen husband,” her mother wrote. “Vacate that throwback to plantation living. You deserve better. Your child deserves better! Come to Mother this very day!”
Rose and the baby did leave. The members of the congregation gathered around Langston. They propped him up — as he liked to say — on every leaning side. They fed him, cleaned the parsonage, washed his clothes, and refrained from denigrating his wife within earshot. In turn, Langston ministered to them.
He spoke of slavery and emancipation, war and peace, justice and injustice, parents and children. He attended the sick. He quoted the Bible. He did not speak down to them. He was the first learned black man in their midst. He didn’t raise the roof when he gave a sermon. He dropped his voice, when it counted. Decrescendo, piano, pianissimo, bang. Love your fellow man, he told them. Feed the hungry. Tend to the ailing. Raise your children with love and with books. The people kept Langston Cane from falling apart. And Langston learned to love the people. Rose returned when Millicent was three months old. She stayed nearly a year, then left. She returned after two months, then left again, insisting that she would not return to that backwater.
Langston conferred with his father, who intervened. This was the last time Langston senior would be able to help his son, for the elder Langston would die a few months later, at age sixty-three. But first, he wrote to the bishop. He helped find a better parsonage for his son. Langston junior met Rose and Millicent at the train station in D.C., and they moved to Denver, Colorado.
Langston thought they would be safe out west. Safe from the Bridgeses. Safe from Rose’s departures. He was wrong. Rose couldn’t stand the A.M.E. women, who were always interfering, always trying to tell her how to cook her food, paint her walls, fold her laundry, run her home. They’d tell her how to clean her own backside if she let them. She stayed a year and left. Back to D.C. with Millicent. She stayed away for three months. Her mother pleaded with her not to return to Langston. Hazel Bridges had Millicent rebaptized, as a Catholic. Rose attended the Catholic church on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. She met an old high school acquaintance, now a young dentist in D.C., and saw him several times.
Langston’s sister Violet — now living in D.C. — heard of this young man and Rose. Langston exploded in a letter. Rose exploded back. A male friend of Violet’s just happened to cross Rose’s dentist friend one evening in D.C., and just happened to land a few blows.
Again, Langston wrote to his wife.
My dearest little girl,
May I still call you that? There was a time when we spoke in such terms, with no hesitation. At war, I swore that when I returned, I’d never spend another minute away from you. Yet we’ve been apart more after the war, it seems, than we were during it.
I know I have failed you. I realize that my patience has been short, many times, and that I have been inflexible in fulfilling my ministerial responsibilities. I know, too, that I have not provided for you in a manner consonant with your material needs and expectations.
All that will change, if you allow me another chance. I have obtained word of a possibility of moving to Canada. We used to speak of Canada, when we were lovers before the war. I know I mentioned to you that my grandfather, Langston Cane the First, a fugitive slave, had escaped to Canada. He lived for some years in a town called Oakville, in the province of Ontario. Oakville is still there. It is not far from Toronto, a major city with all the amenities one could ask for. The A.M.E. has an opening for a small ministry in Oakville. I have made all the inquiries.
Please, keep an open mind. Listen to these details with your mind and your heart.
The parsonage will be provided. From the description given, it is two or three times the size of the Denver parsonage. The rate of pay is a hundred Canadian dollars a month — twice the amount I get here. Oakville is a small but clean town. There is a small Negro community. The town is on the shores of Lake Ontario. The winter is harsh. But we can handle cold climate. All that we’ve come through will make the climate a mere whim, a hurdle of next-to-no-importance.
I would inhabit an igloo, my dearest, if only to have you and Millicent back.
My baby is almost three years old, now, and
I barely know her. She certainly acts as if she barely knows me! Let’s change all that. Come back, Rose. Or, tell me that you’ll join me in Oakville, Canada. Promise me that, and I will meet you in D.C. and make the trip north with you.
Your loving lieutenant,
Langston
They exchanged a few letters. Rose was interested. She had a few questions. How many bedrooms did the parsonage contain? Was there indoor plumbing and an indoor bathroom? Was the parsonage in the village or in some isolated rural area? Langston was able to answer them sufficiently. There were three bedrooms. Yes, there was plumbing and a toilet. And although she hadn’t asked, he assured her that the house had electricity. It was a modern house located on Colbourne Street, in the very heart of town.
In her next letter, Rose consented to move to Oakville with Langston and Millicent. They met in D.C. They spent a week with Langston’s mother in Baltimore. Langston refused to set foot in the Bridgeses’ residence, and nobody invited him. But the day before they departed, Dr. Bridges came to meet Langston. He said that he, like the others, had been scandalized to hear about some of the conditions in which Rose had lived. That he had been so upset by the conditions surrounding the birth of Millicent that he had vowed, at one point, to join Hazel in doing everything possible to sever the husband and wife. But his position had softened, over the years. He understood and admired Langston’s devotion to his work and to his wife. Langston must have suffered terribly during these absences! God bless him. Best wishes to them all. Bon voyage, son-in-law.
They arrived by train in Toronto in 1923. At Union Station, they were met by a minister of the A.M.E. Church in Toronto. He and his wife put up the Canes for two nights. They visited the waterfront. Walked on Yonge Street. Sat, to their amazement, next to white folks in an Italian restaurant. They were assured, however, that not every restaurant and not every hotel would admit black people. You just had to know where to go. And then it was on to Oakville. Rose loved it from the moment she saw the shops on Lakeshore Road. That night, in a parsonage with running water and central heating and electricity and lights and even a basement, Rose took her husband into her arms. They conceived Langston Cane the Fourth on that night.
Chapter 13
TWO DAYS IN MILL’S HOUSE was enough. I had to get out. She had a thing about not opening windows. The larger the opening, the more chance that some street dweller would climb inside, tie her up, and steal her possessions. Unless a visitor was expected, she did not answer the doorbell. “Whoever it is, I don’t want them. I’ll just wait until they go away.”
It wasn’t just the closed door and the atrophied windows that I found stifling. Mill did not wash dishes. She let them pile up in the sink, shoved them unwashed under the sink, and cleaned a plate or fork when she couldn’t do without one. I wanted to help her, but didn’t know where to start. I wouldn’t have known where to put dishwater, or where to put clean dishes. There were two fridges in the house. The one in the kitchen had sour yogurt and moldy cheese. When you opened it, the smell leapt out at you like a hyena. The other fridge was in the living room. It was disconnected. I opened the door and found books, TV Guides, and old magazines. At first, I silently cursed Mill for never throwing anything out. But then I thanked her. I was lucky she had never junked our family papers.
I drove home, parked on the street, noticed my landlady peering out from behind her shades, and got into my apartment. Someone rapped on my door. The knock came swiftly, three times. Then three times again.
It was Yoyo. “Hey, man, are you all right? You haven’t been around.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“The landlady was going to clear out your things, but I reasoned with her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Rent was due yesterday.”
“I’ll pay her when I go out.”
“I would pay her right now, if I were you.”
“Have you had lunch?”
“No.”
“Then let me take you out. How come you’re not working, anyway? Isn’t this prime time for shish kebabs?”
Yoyo told me it was a long story. I paid Elvina Peck and apologized. Then I drove north on Charles, past Hopkins, past all the huge trees, past Thirty-fourth Street, drove a few miles north, and then headed west along Northern Parkway until I wound down a big hill toward Mount Washington. While I drove, Yoyo explained that the cops had come back to him. Not the same nice white cop as before — the one Yoyo had bribed with two kebabs. This one was black, and on a moral crusade. No selling meat on the sidewalk without a license! He confiscated Yoyo’s equipment, took his money as evidence of illegal earnings, and brought him to a police station downtown. Yoyo actually managed to escape. He didn’t want to talk about it any more. He’d tell me later, maybe. I reached over and touched Yoyo’s hand. “I know a woman who would pay you to clean her house. And she might have some friends.” Yoyo brightened at the prospect. He hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours.
I took him to Le Café Chez Washington, which was run by French immigrants. Yoyo was delighted. Immediately, he started talking to a woman serving bread.
I ordered a croissant with goat cheese and cucumber. Yoyo looked faintly disgusted. He took beef soup and poulet au citron. He kept on talking, after lunch, with the woman who had served us. I opened up the Baltimore Sun. In the international news section, I found a story from Canada.
— Toronto
Members of the militant black group Africa First, who claim to have kidnapped a prominent white Canadian doctor, have refused to publicly table any demands.
Dr. Norville Watson, 77, a Toronto urologist whose conservative views on integration and human rights have been criticized by black leaders, disappeared while walking on Tuesday night. His wife contacted police after he failed to return home at the usual time.
Less than 12 hours later, a group calling itself Africa First — a previously unknown organization — sent a letter to the Toronto Times, condemning Watson’s “blatantly racist” attitudes and claiming that it “intercepted him for the good of society.”
Police stated that they know nothing of the group. Black community leaders say they haven’t heard of it either. “It could be a hoax,” said Dr. Langston Cane of Oakville. Cane, who is black and is also a prominent physician, lobbied for years for the rights of blacks, and frequently crossed swords with Watson in the 1950s and 1960s.
I showed the article to Yoyo.
“Toronto would not be a good place for black people right now,” he said. He gave out a hearty laugh. “Africa First. I’d be in big trouble. They’d scoop me right up off the streets. Hey, you! You, Mr. Africa First! Come this way, please.”
After two days in Mill’s mausoleum, the lunch with Yoyo, and the news about Norville Watson, I sat down and wrote about what I had seen and read and done in Baltimore. Later, I started to think again about Ellen, and about how we had come together and broken apart. Every generation had its story, and I was finally ready to tell mine. I started to write again.
Ellen and I had been planning to have a child, but had decided to hang on a little longer, when I finally got approval from the government of Mali to live in a remote village. I had been wanting for a long time to go there to research a novel. We agreed that I should take the trip, that I might not get the chance again, that it would be hard to do, later, with children. But one night, not long after planning the trip, I didn’t bother with a condom. I wanted a baby. I wanted it growing right away. What if I didn’t come back? What if I died over there? What if I caught malaria and my fever shot so high that I became sterile? I wanted to plant the seed immediately. Just in case.
When the test came back positive, Ellen said she still wanted me to go. “It’s only for two months. You’ll be back in plenty of time to catch our baby.”
I left her at five o’clock on a June morning. It had been hot the night before, hot and humid for days. Toronto was in the midst of a heat wave, with temperatures around a hundred degrees F
ahrenheit. We lived in a flat over a fur store so full of cockroaches that they crawled inside the face of our clock radio, and under the hour and minute hands of the clock on our stove. Lots of bugs, but not a molecule of air. You could open every window, but it made no difference. At night, it was hotter inside our place than outside. We had a secondhand air conditioner in the living room window, which looked out over Dovercourt Road. But the machine couldn’t push enough cold air down the hall to make a difference in the bedroom. We draped a sheet over the living room entrance and waited out the heat spell in that room. We ate, read, and slept there. And on the eve of my departure for Africa, we lay there, too sad to make love.
“I’ll miss you like crazy,” she said.
“No, you won’t,” I said, stroking her lips. “You’ll probably spend the whole summer bowling.”
That cracked her up. Ellen had never bowled in her life. When she stopped laughing, she said: “We’re never going to split up again, okay?”
“I thought you wanted me to go.”
“I do. But never again. Not without me.”
“Not without you. Or Babo.” Babo was our name for the baby.
Ellen took my arm. “Babo says, Hey, Dad, you started me, so why don’t you hang around and watch me sprout?”
“You tell Babo,” I said, “that I’ll be back long before Babo is ready to make an appearance.” Ellen hummed when she heard that. She had a way of humming when she ate good food. She hummed as we lay together. She hummed, and she kept her hand curved below her stomach.
Ellen came down to the sidewalk to see me off. She stood in her bathrobe. I couldn’t see any bulge yet. “Je t’aime,” she said.
I got into the taxi and took a short breath. “I’ll miss you like crazy,” she said.
I nodded. It was all I could do. The car started moving. Then it stopped.