Death Dances

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 by J.M. Curls

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by The Dancing Words LLC, Illinois

www.thedancingwords.com

Jacket design by Brandi Doane McCann

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942111

ISBN: 978-1-73215-063-8 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-73215-064-5 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-73215-061-4 (ebook)

For more inquiries regarding this book, please email:

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Edition

For my family, the one I was given and the one I have chosen, I love you all more than you could possibly know.

Contents

My Dance Card

Dance Number One: The Bunny Hop

Dance Number Two: The Stroll

Dance Number Three: The Twist

Dance Number Four: The DC Bop

Dance Number Five: The Tango

Dance Number Six: Interpretative Dance

Dance Number Seven: The Ballet

Dance Number Eight: The Shotgun

Dance Number Nine: Praise Dancing

Dance Number Ten: The Salsa

Dance Number Eleven: The Wobble

Dance Number Twelve: The Waltz

My Dance Card

Death comes to us all. It is simply a matter of time. Since time is the only reality we know, all that we know exists within it. We know nothing outside of it. Life and death do their dance to the music of time—always together—they dance with each of us as partners until the music stops. Each life, like music, moves through tempos such as grave, adagio, allegretto and prestissimo, giving us partners with which to pace our steps and measure our beat.

Time, like music, is an arbitrary thing, subjected to any of a variety of agreed upon conventions. I count time in the dances I have danced, the songs I have sung, and the partners I have had. I say reality is how I did the time-dance with life and death and the women who fill my dance card.

A Year

Each life lives as it does and then demises. Life and death measurements are not subject to interpretation. But in our physical world, time is. If time measurement is a social construct that can be decided by things such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the seasons, Caesars, sundials, and clocks, then I select for myself a new convention to measure a year. I say a year will be measured in the songs of the women I have known. Women who gave my life strength, definition and texture. Women who stepped onto the dance floor, giving themselves to the rhythm of life and death. Women who, at some moment in time, allowed me into their universe, filling my dance card and leaving me richer for the dance.

Dance Number One: The Bunny Hop

The Song: The Bunny Hop

The Dancer: Lorraine Brown

The Observance

There it is, clinging to the crease of the card, the obituary, pristinely clipped from The Call newspaper . Lorraine Marshall, née Brown, of Kansas City, Missouri, passed away on the twenty-eighth of April at the Morning Star Healthcare Center. Born in 1944, Lorraine attended Booker T. Washington Grade School and Lincoln High School. She took college courses at Penn Valley Junior College. Lorraine worked as a practical nurse at Queen of the World and St. Joseph’s Hospital until she retired. Lorraine loved to bake and work with deaf children at the Silver Lining Home for the Deaf. Lorraine was a deaconess at the Pleasant Oaks Baptist Church, where she had been a member for fifty-five years. Lorraine is survived by three children (Paula Marshall Hendricks, Felix Marshall, and Sherman Marshall), nine grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a host of family and friends. Her home going has been set for Saturday, May 5, at 10:00 a.m. at the Pleasant Oak Baptist Church. That was that. A life confined to eight sentences.

I have not seen Lorraine since high school. I went away. She stayed in the neighborhood. In the picture, I see a woman with a plump face peering through glasses. She does not smile. Her hair is a short bob. After reading the obituary, I slip it back into the spine of the card, put the card inside of its envelope, and drop a life in the trash.

The Dance

It’s a Small, Small World

And so, with the reading of the obituary, it began. The unwrapping of my world for almost three-quarters of a century, traveling back to a place that time had buried beneath the strata of a million memories. The excavation took a while, but then there she was. Lorraine Brown. The Lorraine that I knew lived across the street. Her hair was two black braids; her manner was delicate; her friendship was true.

We talked every day, shared every secret. Lorraine told me the first dirty joke I ever heard. She took my hand, stealthily guided me inside her garage, and whispered, This is top secret. I shouldn’t tell you this. My brothers told me, so cross your heart and hope to die you will never, ever tell.

I raised my hand and swore on my imminent death. Lorraine was pleased with my pledge. Her tone grew even more hushed.

Well you see, a little boy is looking for his little red wagon. So he goes into his parents’ bedroom without knocking, and guess what?

What?

They’re in bed together.

Uh-oh. I was shocked.

Wait, wait,—she was hopping up and down—and they were both naked.

Oh. I inhaled, unable to exhale.

I know. I know. And the little boy sees them, and he looks at his dad and points at his you-know-what.

At this, Lorraine points her finger between her legs. I wasn’t sure if I knew what, but whatever it was had to be shocking.

And he says to his dad, ‘Daddy, what is that?’ and his dad says, ‘That’s my flashlight.’ With that, she sputtered a laugh. I joined her. Lorraine continued.

Then he points to his momma’s you-know-what. I felt certain I did. And says, ‘Momma, what is that?’ and the momma says, ‘That’s my cellar.’ We put our hands to our mouths and tittered.

So, the little boy says, ‘Dad, could you take your flashlight and look in Momma’s cellar and see if you can find my little red wagon?’

We stared at each other for a moment, as the proposition seemed anatomically impossible, but then simultaneously erupted into peals of laughter. We weren’t quite sure why, but we understood that what we had just shared was very adult and therefore very dirty.

That was life east of Twenty-Seventh and Prospect in the late ’40s and early ’50s. People lived in comfortable, neat homes. Some were large, some not. All had been recently vacated by Whites fleeing the Black migration moving up from the south. The homes had manicured, maintained lawns. Many lawns had hedges and flowers. Children played ball in the street, played hopscotch on the sidewalk, jumped rope, and rode bikes. The local drug store, Parkview, sold lots of cards for Father’s Day because, for the most part, people lived in nuclear families.

Children played outside unmolested and unabducted. The two rules that governed most children were: (1) you could have a nickel to buy a treat when the ice cream truck came jostling, playing music, and (2) you had to report home when the street lights came on.

Fathers held jobs and supported their families with income as laborers from construction, the stockyards, the railroads, and the coveted post office. They were maintenance men, icemen, trash men, milkmen, and laundrymen. Some owned small businesses. They had fish markets, gasoline stations, and cleaners. Big businesses to us were the Palace and Consolidated cab companies, funeral homes, and The Call newspaper. Some people passed for White and worked in White businesses, undetected, morphing back to Black when the 5:00 p.m. whistle blew. Lorraine’s dad was one of those. The Black middle class were teachers, nurses, lawyers, and doctors, in that order, as other professions held little promise for employment. There was also the occasional outlier who graduated college with a major he could never practice.

While it was a segregated society, it was not monolithic. The local grocer’s name was Hoffman. His family knew everyone in the community. When women bought their groceries, Mr. Hoffman required only that they sign for them. They could pay later. The Parkview Drug Store was White-owned, but the lunch counter was ours with cooks who for fifty cents would give us a spectacular cheeseburger and a twelve-inch strawberry malt. One sales clerk was Black; one was White. The pharmacist was Black; the postal worker who sat selling stamps and money orders was White. Once a week a Black man came into the neighborhood to collect for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Every day a White man pushed a cart down Prospect Street selling Mexican tamales.

We could not eat at Myron Green Cafeteria or the Jones Department Store downtown, but no one gave a shit. The workers said the food tasted like sour dishwater. Anything worth having was always smuggled home anyway. Besides, who wanted that food when you had Gates’s and Bryant’s Barbecue or could order Chicken in the Box that would be delivered smoking hot to your door?

Some women worked. If they wanted to work at will, many did what was euphemistically described as day work, which meant cleaning White people’s homes. A woman could have as many or as few days as she chose. Women also worked in the laundries, as elevator operators, as cooks, and in a variety of plants. People, if they sought it, could find decent work that paid a living wage. So the Great Migration continued, pouring people into the city from the south. Big homes had roomers, people who lived with the homeowners until they got on their feet.

Friday night, at our house and many others, meant watching the fights on television. Saturday night, for adults, meant dressing up to go out to a club for drinks, cigarettes, and dancing. Sunday meant going to somebody’s church.

For a child, a good time meant going for a Sunday ride in a car and ice cream cones. There was the occasional visit to Swope Park, and on the Fourth of July a picnic on the segregated Watermelon Hill. The weekly admission price of fifteen cents could get you into the Saturday afternoon serials at the Carver Movie Theater.

Rhythm and Blues could be had any day on the Black radio station, KPRS (for Keeping People Really Satisfied). I’m sure there were police but I rarely saw them. When people died, one of the three main funeral homes took them under.

This was the world Lorraine and I inhabited. It was safe, sound, and most of the time fun. But that was then, before public accommodations, integration, the Civil Rights Movement, social upheavals, and economic downturns made landfall into our world, irrevocably altering it for better or for worse.

The Dolls

Lorraine wanted to play with the dolls. We both had them and named them after movie stars we saw on the silver screen and magazines we read at the Parkview.

My doll was Audrey, named for Audrey Hepburn. Hers was Susan, after Susan Hayward. It was misting, and so we sat on the porch having ventriloquist conversations as those two alter egos.

"I’m planning to go out tonight with Carey Grant, when he finishes making Room for One More. We are going to dinner. Then we are flying to Niagara Falls for a honeymoon," my Audrey said.

Did you get married? asked her Susan.

Not yet, but I will soon.

You need to if you’re going on a honeymoon. Where is Niagara Falls?

I think it’s in Paris.

"Well, that’s nice. Clark is taking me to the Hit Parade. That’s in New York. I’m going to meet Snooky Lanson and Gisele MacKenzie."

Not to be outdone, my Audrey boasted, Well I’m going to make another movie.

What’s it called?

"I think it will be called, Tomorrow Is Just Another Day. I don’t know. I may make a western and call it, The Sun is Hot. It won’t be in black and white like your movie. Mine will be in Technicolor."

Lorraine’s Susan countered, "I’m making a movie. It’s a scary movie called, The Mummy’s Cousin. The mummy comes out with all the bandages and holes for eyes and… It was then that Lorraine whispered, Look, look who’s coming."

I turned in the direction that Lorraine was looking and saw Ernestine. Ernestine lived near the other end of the block in her aunt’s house. They had come from Louisiana, so my mother said. I had muted a laugh when I first saw her. She talked funny, and her clothes were labeled, by our neighbor, as mammy made. They were poorly constructed and never seemed to fit.

Hi, Ernestine, where are you going? Lorraine asked.

Goin’ to Kaufman’s. Gotta git beans and salt pork for Momma. She wants to boil a pot.

What did she just say? I asked.

She said her mother is sending her to the store to get beans and salt pork to make dinner, Lorraine replied.

What was Lorraine doing? Even then I understood class and did not want to be a part of Ernestine’s social group.

Well, you better get going was my suggestion.

Say, we could walk with you. Then when we come back you can play dolls with us.

What? No! Had Lorraine lost her mind? What kind of a unilateral decision was that? First, I did not like the way Ernestine talked. Second, I did not like the weird dress she was wearing. It had no belt and was not starched. And third, I intuitively knew two people playing dolls was far better than three. But there was Lorraine, up and moving toward Ernestine, motioning for me to follow. Grudgingly I did. I was right about twos and threes. The two of them walked and talked while I followed, grumbling to myself.

How could Lorraine even understand Ernestine without an interpreter? I heard Ernestine say something about being Geechie, which I later learned had something to do with African descendants from Sierra Leone. To be honest, I really had no clue what she was saying. Good lord, how could Lorraine tolerate it? Her speech pummeled my ears. I decided to wait outside the grocery store and watch the people get on the bus.

When they emerged from the store, the three of us began skipping down the street. Skipping was perfect. It was not a team sport and was hard to do when talking.

My house came up first, and that should have been the end of it. Lorraine and I should have stopped and resumed our doll playing, and Ernestine should have taken her beans and salt pork six houses down the street. But no, Lorraine wanted more.

Would you like to play dolls with us? she sunnily invited. The nerve. Lorraine was now inviting a nonnative speaker to my home—not her home, my home.

S’okay?

She said…

I know what she said.

Well, is it OK?

How awkward. Thanks, Lorraine.

I twisted my mouth, searching for a response. Well, you know…her momma’s beans…

‘Sides, I ain’t got no doll, Ernestine confessed. I looked at Lorraine. Case closed.

We can make you a doll, proposed Lorraine.

We can? Was she serious?

Ya can? Ernestine asked, overjoyed.

Sure we can. Lorraine smiled. Right?

Sure. Why not? I conceded.

We can get some rags, and does your momma have any old hose? Lorraine was addressing me. Lorraine had not only appropriated my front porch. Now she intended to repo my mother’s nylons. I was too overwhelmed to object.

Let me see. I’ll ask.

Ernestine was as happy as I had ever seen any human being. She flung down her grocery bag and began this spontaneous hugging thing with Lorraine and me, speaking a tongue that has not been used since the tower of Babel.

With socks, rags, and nylons riddled with runs, Lorraine rendered a doll. Admittedly it was slightly terrifying, unnatural, and asymmetrical. But for Ernestine, it was spellbinding. She kept trying to articulate her gratitude. It was what Lorraine did next that practically paralyzed me. She gave Ernestine her doll.

Here, you take Susan, she insisted. I am going to play with Elizabeth.

Womanhood

Was I thirteen? No, twelve and a half. Lorraine and I did not go to the same school. She was Protestant. I was Catholic. Catholics, at that time, were discouraged from fraternizing with Protestants and were forbidden to attend Protestant churches. In Kansas City, this would equate to self-imposed social isolation, as most colored people were not Catholic. The enforced education separation was almost too much for Lorraine and me to bear. Our separated school circumstance forced us to reconvene after school at the Parkview lunch counter over a limeaid or a phosphate soda.

These rendezvous were critical to our sustainability. The Parkview was where we deliberated and discussed the major events that comprised our world: the latest Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ records, the Mickey Mouse Club, the disgusting and unsanitary kissing practices of the French, the hoop and the crinoline under our skirts, and the scandalous but ever-so-exciting pelvic movements of that singer from Memphis who said he was White but sounded Black.

It was in the throes of one of these life-altering conversations that I felt the warm wetness in my underpants. What was that? Maybe something. Maybe nothing. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that significant. When I stood from the stool to leave, I heard Lorraine from behind.

Did you sit in something?

I don’t think so?

Well, there’s a big spot on the back of your skirt.

Yeah, maybe. I did feel something.

I think you should go home.

I think so, too. I felt another surge. I was growing concerned.

I’ll walk you home. We walked an ominous walk. Each step told us things were changing. I had heard about menstruation from my other friends at school. They tried to describe it. Some said it was painful. Some said messy. Some said it made them feel different. Others said it didn’t change anything. Together Lorraine and I went to the bathroom, where I pulled down my pants. Lorraine gasped and clasped her hand across her mouth.

I think this is it, I announced, staring at my pants crumpled around my ankles.

What do you think we should do?

I think I’m going to have to get supplies.

I think you should tell your momma.

I think so, too.

I next stepped out of my underpants, with pinched fingers lifted them like a flag of surrender, and marched with Lorraine to my mother in the kitchen.

Momma, look, look! My voice began to break as she turned to see what had me so distraught.

What is it? Momma turned, examined my cotton cluster, put her hand across her heart as if to make a pledge of allegiance, and then declared, Child, you have just gone into womanhood. Womanhood! On the stool at Parkview!

Now let me tell you, child, and you must understand. You listen, too, Lorraine, because you’re probably next. Lorraine took two terrified steps backward.

When you go into womanhood, there are things you have to know, so listen and believe what I have to say. For one thing, this is going to happen every month, and you may not know the time or the place.

It was beginning to sound a lot like the second coming.

And another thing,—her finger was waging now—you can never take a bath or wash your hair during your time of the month, or you might catch your death of cold and go right on away from here, just like that. Momma snapped her finger.

Things were going from bad to worse, but there was more.

Most important, and I mean most important, no messing around with boys. Do you know what I’m saying?

Dead silence. Was that all she had to say about that?

Do you understand me? Her voice escalated, and she seemed anxious.

Yes, I think so. I had to say yes. The glare from her eyes was so intense I thought she might lapse into an advanced state of apoplexy or just melt like the witch in Oz.

Do you know what I mean, Lorraine?

Yes, ma’am, Lorraine reflexively spat out.

Good. Then enough said about that. So now you have to go to Parkview and get yourself a green box of Kotex. Not a blue or pink box but a green box of Kotex and a sanitary belt. That’s how you take care of yourself. What color did I say?

In concert, we repeated Green.

Green. That’s right. Now let me get you some money.

No. I followed Momma as she searched her purse. No, no, Momma. I cannot go to Parkview and buy a green box of Kotex. Everyone knows me there. Everyone will know I’m in womanhood. There are men there, and they will know. I was begging. I was crying, wiping my eyes with the bottom of my blouse.

Momma, please. I can’t do it. I just can’t. That’s when I heard the other frightened voice in the room.

I’ll do it. Give me the money. I will do it.

From that day until I left for college, Lorraine would go to Parkview each month with seventy-five cents and buy me a green box of Kotex and bring it to my house in a brown paper sack.

A Is for Adolescence

In my sophomore year, Momma took a job for two days in a private family. The family she worked for lived near the Country Club plaza, that incredible outdoor mall designed in a Seville Spanish style by J. C. Nicholas.

Up to this point in my life, going to the plaza had been a destination. Though it was only five miles from our home, it was like going to Topeka. Colored people didn’t regularly go there. The plaza’s shops and boutiques displayed only the best of what Kansas City called haute couture. They flaunted brands you never saw downtown. If Negroes were there they were probably working as stock or janitorial personnel.

On Thanksgiving Day and throughout the entire Christmas season, the tile roofs and Spanish architecture of the plaza became a blazing light spectacle that was astounding to behold. The light display wasn’t limited to the retail center. The surrounding neighborhood also got into the act, illuminating the night sky with a rainbow of colors, making each residence an electronic canvas. It was magical, and everyone was invited to view. All you needed was a car.

We had one, and our parents would treat my sister and me to a one-night ride through the gala, which was the plaza. We would all ooh and ah. Dad would slow down, when he could, so we could better appreciate anything fascinating. This evening we took a long pause in front of the home where Momma worked.

This is Miss Lottie’s house, she announced as if it were her own. There were lights in trees, and on the roof Santa was darting for the chimney with a sleigh full of toys.

It has five bedrooms. Isn’t it beautiful?

I thought you said they were Jewish. Dad was staring at the roof.

They are was all she said. Lesson learned—belonging can trump religion.

The money Momma made came in handy. That Christmas Momma asked Miss Lottie to purchase Daddy a tie from the high-end store, Jack Henry. Momma bought my sister a doll from Parkview, whose hair could be permed, and me a portable radio from the pawn shop.

By that summer, however, I wanted to fall in love. Every evening when I would retreat with the phone under my bed covers to talk with Lorraine, I would vociferously complain of my romance deprivation.

Lorraine was at the all-Black high school, Lincoln. I was at the all-White Catholic high school, St. Patrick’s. This is the way it worked. Each year when Negro kids graduated from Saint Augustine’s Mission School, Father Henley would divide them up and parcel them out to the White Catholic schools that were also pretty much divided by ethnicity. Three or four children went to the Italian high school, St. Joseph’s. Three or four went to the German high school, Saint Gregory’s. Three or four went to the Irish high school, Saint Patrick’s. Usually, there were two or three families in the parish with greater means. These would send their boys to De La Salle or Rockhurst and their girls to St. Theresa’s or Loretto. If you were considered extremely well-off, you probably had become a Presbyterian convert.

Father Henley had selected two other girls and me to go to St. Patrick’s. The first year was difficult. We clung to one another for comfort and support. It just was not easy. In gym class, we were the last girls to be picked for anyone’s team. We all sat together at lunch, and although others were at the table, we only talked among ourselves. In choir the nun had an affinity for Stephen Foster songs, which lauded the South. She was particularly fond of Old Black Joe and My Old Kentucky Home.

Girls would sometimes snicker, whisper, and cough when they passed, making us feel we were the object of their conversation. When we went to class, people sat beside us only if there was no other desk available.

By the beginning of my sophomore year, one of my classmates defected to attend Lincoln High School. The other one contracted tuberculosis and was dispatched to a sanitarium. This abandonment left me totally isolated. While there were three Negroes each in the junior and senior class levels, the one thing more verboten than integration was speaking to underclassmen.

Lorraine knew my dilemma and tried her best to keep me from becoming socially stunted. She enrolled us both into the Johnny Mathis Fan Club, which met every other week. When we came together, all the girls would write love letters to Johnny, get professional black-and-white photos signed by our Adonis, endlessly play his records, and dream of the day he would ask one of us to marry him.

But Johnny was not enough. I wanted more. Lorraine had real suitors. In the spring, while walking home from Parkview, I saw a boy in a crew neck sweater and penny loafers carrying her books. She had turned to go to her house when she remembered them. When she swiveled to reclaim the books, Lorraine caught sight of me waiting alone on the opposite corner. I saw her lower her eyes. She could sense my despair.

It was understood that we