Black Chicago Page 13

  “They were married to each other, the man in that house was married to the woman in the house next door and vice versa.”

  “Saints preserve us!”

  Coleen Ryan-Roberts stood on the enclosed porch of their new home, her arms folded defiantly across her firm Irish breasts. The bigoted bastards. You’d think they would simply accept us and go on about their business.

  She out-stared the woman across the street and returned to the interior of her home. Time to prepare dinner, Clarence would be putting the car in the garage in a half hour.

  She strolled slowly from the porch to the kitchen admiring the clean lines of the Danish sofa and table and comfortable chairs.

  “Who the hell wants to eat feeling like they’re in an electric chair.”

  The kitchen made her feel as though she were on a western ranch. Chile peppers were streaming down the walls beside the gas range, a giant chopping block gave her ample working space and all of the technological conveniences were strategically placed to make it a modern kitchen with an old fashioned look.

  Fried chicken, steamed rice, a tossed salad. She walked over to the kitchen sink, stared out into the small garden they’d started at the beginning of the summer.

  “I’m a southern boy, baby, we got to grow some greens ’n beans back there.”

  They had to give up on the garden after it was vandalized three times. The woman in the house next door smiled from her kitchen window and sprinkled a cheerful wave with her fingers.

  Coleen waved and smiled back.

  Thank God they’re not all bigoted assholes. She turned from the window and pulled the package of chicken breasts from the refrigerator.

  It wasn’t easy being the first mixed couple in a predominantly Irish, working class neighborhood. They had seriously considered selling the house and going somewhere else for the first six months.

  “Coleen, are you sure you want go thru with this? Lets face it, with both of us working, you’re going to be here alone a lot. Can you handle it?”

  “Clarence I don’t see colors, I see people for what they are and what we’re looking at is a bunch of bigoted Irish bastards, my Dad, Lord rest his Soul, was a bigoted Irish bastard.”

  They were given the full treatment; garbage on the freshly cut lawn, crank calls and letters, mean looks and a few times, graffiti painted on the front door.

  The hate treatment was never a full fledged community attack and gradually, with the aid of the local Catholic priest and the appeals made by right thinking neighbors at community meetings, the nasty treatment had simply degenerated to hate stare bouts with the woman across the street.

  “Well, baby, looks like we’re over the hump. We’ve had a whole month without one obscene phone call …”

  “The tracer took care of that.”

  “No one has dumped garbage on the lawn.”

  “Seeing Father Maloney clean up the last time finished that off.”

  “And nobody has painted anything on the front door lately.”

  “Maybe they ran out of paint.”

  “I hope so.”

  They were left in social isolation. The lady in the house to the south of them smiled and waved from her kitchen window, but didn’t extend her cordiality beyond that.

  Coleen was given a harder time of it than Clarence. She could easily remember the slurs in the neighborhood supermarket; “Imagine, a nice lookin’ red headed Irish girl married to a nigger.”

  “Is it really true, honey? That the darky got a bigger dong than us?!”

  The social isolation bothered them because they both wanted friends in the neighborhood, the sense of belonging.

  The isolation ended with the arrival of Frank and Melba Mackae. They purchased the house on the north side of them and they were also a mixed couple. He was white and she was black.

  Clarence and Coleen peeked thru their drapes like excited children.

  “Clarence, how do you know his wife is black?”

  “Well, c’mon, you can’t be that dark and not be black, not only that I saw ’em kissin in the middle of their living room before they hung their drapes.”

  They impatiently waited a week before going next door with a batch of cookies and a welcoming speech.

  They considered a number of nervous scenarios before making the approach.

  “Clarence, what if they’re not our kind of people?”

  “Well, we won’t kin til we find out, will we?”

  “Coleen, can you imagine what it would be like if the whole block were full of mixed couples?”

  “Clarence, what if she doesn’t like me?”

  “What’re you talking about, if she doesn’t like you?”

  “Well, you know the kind of attitude some black women have about white women married to black men.”

  “I hardly think this black woman would have that kind of attitude, under the circumstances.”

  “Hi, my name is Clarence Roberts and this is my wife, Coleen … We’d like to be the first to welcome you guys to the neighborhood.”

  “C’mon in, we were wondering whether or not we should come over and introduce ourselves. I’m Frank Mackae and this is my wife Melba. C’mon in, we’ve got a really good bottle of wine to share.”

  They had hit it off, as the saying goes. Clarence and Frank shared a conservative—boot strap philosophy that was not popular with African—Americans, in general, and white liberals, specifically.

  “I’m with you there, Frank, we can’t go around for the rest of our lives talking about how badly the slavemaster treated us.

  I mean, gimme a break!”

  Coleen and Melba didn’t hit it off quite so well; but there was no really big problem between them. The basic area of disagreement was how they viewed their positions in their husband’s lives.

  “Coleen, why do you have to cater to Clarence like that? I mean, look, you’re working and he’s working. Why do you have to come home and cook and clean house and all of that while he does nothing but watch ball games on T.V.”

  “Melba, I like catering to Clarence, its as simple as that.”

  “Hmf! You won’t see me doing all that domestic stuff by myself. We clean together or we clean apart.”

  Despite the fact that they shared what they called “The mixed Couple Syndrome,” the long fence they shared made them better neighbors.

  Coleen poured a liberal amount of flour in a brown paper bag, sprinkled in salt, pepper and sage and dropped the chicken breasts into the bag, and shook them around the way Clarence had taught her.

  “My mamma used to batter her chicken like this, its the best way in the world to get a nice even coating of batter on your chicken.”

  Clarence felt, in this second summer of their relationship with the MacRae’s, that they were on the way to a lasting friendship.

  “I know, it isn’t always easy to get along with Melba, but lets face it, we don’t have a perfect relationship either; and I love you.”

  They weren’t particularly “avant garde” in any way. Frank was Scot; “My God! what am I doing but here in the middle of all these heathen Celtics?” And loved the whiskey after a hard day at the office.

  He teased Coleen about being Irish; “if we Scots hadn’t introduced you to Scotch, you’d still be drinking Irish whiskey.”

  And she teased him about being Scot.

  “C’mon, tell me the truth, Melba, you’re married to a Scotsman, where’s the money buried?”

  Melba and Clarence teased each other about being married to Coleen and Frank, gently, at first, and always privately.

  “So, this is what it had to come to, huh? A freckled faced imitation of a sister.”

  “Whoooaaa! where are you comin from? I mean, how’re you going to defend your marriage to the slavemaster? Or was he merely the overseer?”

  Frank and Coleen never took it that far. Something else happened. They discovered their whiteness, during the course of a weekend tanning session.

  Clarence and Melba ha
d spent a few minutes in the sun over the course of the summer, and let it go at that.

  Melba, you’re already the color of my favorite eggplant, what the hell are you trying to prove?”

  “And how about you, pal?”

  Clarence had a golf morning and Melba went to get her nails done. Frank and Coleen were left in their sun tanning deck chairs, backs unsun-screened.

  “Frank!”

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  “You think I could persuade you to come over here and splash some sun lotion on my back?”

  Something about the way he gently rubbed the oil on her about—to—be—burned—back made Coleen look at Frank from another angle.

  Clarence rubbed oil on her as though it were a chore, Frank understood. And when she rubbed oil on his back, he thanked her in a way that indicated she understood his skin in a way he had never had understood before.

  “Coleen, you’re a bonny lass, thanks”

  A bonny lass? Clarence wouldn’t be caught dead saying something like that.

  Coleen measured rice into a pot, rinsed it … “No Uncle Bens for the kid, baby, I wanna have real ol’ fashioned rice in my guts.”

  She discovered a kind of sensitivity in Frank that she was reluctant to admit, didn’t exist in Clarence.

  “Well, look, lets face it, Coleen, I’m sure a black guy must go thru sheer hell on the day to day level, just being black.”

  It started with an application of sun tan lotion to the back and escalated to stolen kisses in the kitchen during, social get togethers.

  Coleen dropped a piece of chicken into a skillet of hot grease. The grease sputtered and popped.

  They had become lovers a month ago, Coleen stared absently at the chicken frying. What the hell was it all about? Had they simply become lovers because they had black mates, something in common?

  The irony of the whole idea made her smile. No, they hadn’t become lovers because his wife was black and her husband was black, They had become lovers because they had fallen in love.

  She removed lettuce, tomatoes, vinegar and oil from the refrigerator. She was in love with a man who wasn’t her husband, a man who was married to someone else. But she didn’t feel the shame she thought she would.

  Frank was gentle, thoughtful, considerate and loved her.

  “Coleen, I love you.”

  “I love you too, Frank, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “We can go away and start a new life together, I’m not rich but I have a little money coming to me from a trust fund.”

  She turned the pieces of chicken over in the skilled and began peeling leaves from the lettuce head into a salad bowl. For the tenth time that day she thought about Frank, about Clarence, compared the two men.

  Clarence suffered thru the comparison; Frank was exquisitely sensitive to her sexual and emotional needs. Clarence had always been the kind of lover who placed himself on top physically and emotionally.

  She had analyzed her reasons for marrying Clarence.

  Number one, she concluded, she had married him to defy her racist parents and number two, he had been the first man to fully penetrate her. She had felt on obligation, as a practicing Catholic, to marry him.

  But they definitely didn’t have a case of “jungle fever,” then or now. She heard a car pull into the back garage area, Clarence?

  She peeked out of the rear window, Melba pulling in with packages. The woman must shop every day of the week. She turned back to the salad, began to toss it, turned the steamed rice off and began to fork pieces of chicken out of the skillet.

  Damn! Life could be so complicated.

  “Coleen, let me make something clear to you. I’ve been aware for quite awhile that Melba doesn’t love me, maybe she never did. I think she saw me as a way to get a privileged break in this society, you know what I mean?”

  “Lets face it, this is still a white man’s country.

  Coleen placed the salad in the refrigerator, covered the chicken platter with tin foil and wandered into the master bedroom and sprawled backwards on the bed.

  Being with Frank was so beautiful, so easy. She cradled her head in her hands and stared at the ceiling.

  Being with Clarence was always a challenge, a problem to be solved. There was never a time when she felt as much at ease with Clarence as she felt with Frank.

  Maybe its because he’s white. She spooned the thought around in her mind. Maybe it’s because he’s white. They had taken days off from work to be together and no one paid them any attention in restaurants when they held hands.

  No one questioned their right to be together when Frank rented the hotel room. Life was much easier with Frank, no doubt about it. And I do love him.

  “Coleen, this isn’t something I planned either. How was I to know that I’d meet you. Lets face it, we’re not wild eyed adolescents out for a cheap thrill.”

  She heard the garage door open and close, Clarence was home. She sat up on the side of the bed, a slight headache nudging into her temples.

  She listened to her husband’s movements, pictured his routine. He comes in, tosses his jacket across the back of the nearest chair, opens the refrigerator for a can of beer. She looked up to see him leaning against the door frame, one hand jammed into his pocked, the other one wrapped around a can of beer.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  She smiled a welcome home smile that wasn’t returned.

  “Chicken, fried chicken and rice.”

  “Good, lemme get out of this suit ’n tie.”

  Coleen shuffled past Clarence entering the bedroom as she went to set plates on the dining room table, a dozen conflicting thoughts on her brain. The faint scent of Opium lingered in her nostrils.

  She ignored the signals that the perfume sent. Who in the hell am I to be jealous?

  She blessed the meal as they sat opposite each other, exchanging general pleasantries, Clarence was drinking another beer and seemed more preoccupied than usual.

  Had someone called him a nigger on the way home? It still happened occasionally, after almost two years.

  “The chicken o.k.”

  “O, yeah, its good.”

  But she notice that he had only taken a few bites from his piece of chicken. He toyed with his salad and gulped his beer.

  “Any more beer?”

  “Some down at the bottom, I’ll get it for you.”

  “Thats o.k., I can get it.”

  She detected a petulant tone, decided to ride it out. He returned to the table popping open a fresh can.

  “We have some black walnut ice cream, if you want some dessert?”

  Clarence sat down and leaned toward her with the beer can cradled in his hands, ignored her question.

  “Coleen?”

  God, the man looks tired, look at the circles under his eyes.

  “Yes, Clarence.”

  He slugged more beer down, his eyes wandering from left to right.

  “I want to talk with you.”

  “Yes, Clarence.”

  O my God, don’t tell me he’s been fired. Corporations were cutting a lot of “minority surplus” these days.

  “What I mean is that I have something I want to tell you.”

  She leaned back in her chair. The least I can do is give him a shoulder to cry on, no matter what.

  “What is it, Clarence?”

  Once again his eyes darted from side to side like a trapped animal.

  “Coleen, there’s somebody else in my life,” he blurted.

  She leaned forward slowly, her lover jaw slack.

  “Somebody … else … in … your … life?”

  “Now look, I felt the best thing to do is be honest about this. I’m not having a fling or anything like that. Its important that you understand that, this is the real thing … you understand what I mean?”

  “I think so. And who is this somebody else, may I ask?”

  She couldn’t prevent the anger she felt from coloring her tone. Clarence
drained his beer can and locked his eyes with hers.

  “Melba MacRae.”

  He was startled by the manic flood of laughter she released. She was laughing so hard her sides hurt, tears came to her eyes. Clarence came around the table to comfort her.

  “Coleen? look, I’m really ’n truly sorry about this. I never wanted to hurt you, you know that.”

  A half hour later he wasn’t laughing after she calmed down enough to tell him why she had been laughing.

  “Molly O’Reilly, if there’s another woman this side of county Cork who makes soda bread half as good as you, give me her telephone number and I guarantee you my bachelor days will be over at the tender age of thirty three.”

  “There ya go again, Danny Ryan, wrappin’ your spit around a bunch of compliments.”

  “Your soda bread is a great inspiration for that. But now tell me, Mike, how did these people wind up cross married, as it t’were?”

  “Only God’n the saints in Heaven can answer that one …”

  “The way it was told to me by Mary Flannagan, their next door neighbors over there, is that they had a meeting … can you imagine? And the black couple decided to move into the house next to Mary’s and the white couple moved in next door.”

  “Most people who live in the neighborhood now don’t know about these people.”

  “How long ago did this take place?”

  “How long was it, Molly, 12—15 yrs. ago?”

  “About that long, yes.”

  “And to further complicate things, take a close look sometimes, if you will, at their children. The black couple have a girl … how old is she about, Molly?”

  “About twelve, I’d say.”

  “And the white couple have a boy about the same age.

  The girl who belongs to the black couple looks Irish, and the boy looks black.”

  “You mean …?

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Saints preserve us!”

  Coda—Chicago

  (Maxwell Street/Halsted Street) for some people it was the center of the known world, a Jewish souk, a place to go and buy cheap stuff cheap, or second hand stuff second hand.

  Gypsies lived there, glittering, clairvoyant, deep. The most musical people in town gathered on the corner of Maxwell and Halsted to be fed quarters and dimes. Novels were written there, never to be read, hopes were realized.