Black Chicago Page 9

  We made fits and starts. The cowbell and chekere players were project individualists, sheer improvisation from gong to shake. We accidentally stumbled onto a six-eight for five minutes and I tried to ride it with the quinto but no go.

  Damn! They had these beautiful fiber glass Gon Bops but couldn’t play a lick.

  I suspected the drums had been stolen.

  “Why don’t you take the bottom for a while?”

  Skull was giving me the bass, an exchange. I stood up as though I was going to change places with him and slowly burrowed into the circle around us. It was the closest thing to a disappearing act I had ever performed.

  Skull, the leader, saw what I was doing immediately.

  “Hey! hey! Where you going?”

  The prey was escaping, the sacrifice had made it to the edge of the circle, the escapee was dodging cars racing across State Street.

  “Hey! Catch that dude!”

  The free man, slightly winded, was opening the doors to the leather and pine scented atmosphere of the Common Ground.

  “Good evening, sir, would you like to make a reservation for dinner?”

  “Yes, a table for two at 5:30.”

  “Very good, sir. Smoking or non-smoking?”

  “Non-smoking.”

  I staggered to the bar and climbed up on a seat. Thank goodness there were backs on the seats, I needed support. “Remy Martin, double, please.”

  I hunched over my drink trying to look suave, my heart tripping like timbales. At least it was keeping proper time.

  Rose Bahia LeVeau made her entrance five minutes later a gorgeous dream in egg yolk yellow and mint green.

  “Been waiting long?”

  “Nawww, just got here a few minutes ago.”

  We traded a sweet peck on the lips before she occupied the seat next to me.

  “Now then, I don’t have to tell you what I’ve been doing, I’ve been on my j.o.b. all day. What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

  I took a sip from my snifter and tried to sound as blase as possible.

  “Oh, not a helluva lot, a little this a little that. You know how it is when you’re killing time.”

  “Mr. Jones, a table for two?”

  We strolled into the dining room arm in arm, my legs slightly rubbery, a smile on my face. Killing time? Yeahh, that’s what I’ve been doing, killing time with Skull ’n the gang and they’re still doing it, killing time.

  Nostalgia

  “Eschikagou,” the Native Americans called it, the place where the wild onions stink. The banks of the Chicago River still stink, but the stench doesn’t come from wild onions.

  The lake gives off a ripe odor too, ’specially on tropical nights when the fish have bunched up for a little midnight fun. But these are abstract, almost impersonal memories, nothing like the sizzling thoughts provoked by the sniffing of fingers that once identified one teenaged girl from her sister, a carefully guarded perfume.

  There are ghosts strolling East and West on 55th Street, North and South on King Drive, begging to be redeemed by people who cannot remember who they were. The ghosts, like the memories of past thunderstorms and grand parties, give us hints of what we are doomed for.

  The city sounds unique, whether it be a tinny blues record on Maxwell and Halsted, or the thudding of ground hammers beating the ground to death for the sake of another tall building.

  And if we really want to refresh ourselves, we must always return to what it tasted like … the snowcones, the hot watermelon slices, the popcorn, the too wet kisses, the hot biscuits with home made butter, the ashes.…

  The House of Eng

  Years ago there was this wonderful Chinese restaurant in Hyde Park, on the penthouse level in the El Prado Hotel.

  The place was like a fairy land to me, a spot where I could go to have a well mixed drink, eat an authentic Cantonese meal (no chop suey here), gaze out onto the lake, day dream, get away from the city tensions.

  Beautifully designed restaurant, seductively decorated, Chinese style. A long bar at the entrance, huge dining room beyond and a terrace on the northern side for those special moments and special people.

  The bartender never seemed to take his nose out of the air (I think it helped make his daiquiris taste better) and the waitresses were lovely, helpful and hip. No matter how often you came with a different person, or how many times you came during the week, they always greeted you as though you were a first time visitor.

  I would have fond memories of the House of Eng ’til this day, if for no other reason, than the fact that it’s where I last saw Cozette.

  What was Cozette’s last name? I can’t remember. But, it doesn’t matter anyway, she’s probably been married two or three times since I saw her. Haven’t we all?

  The thing about Cozette is that we shared a lifestyle, a neighborhood and a kind of love that a few people know about these days.

  I met Cozette when we were teenagers living on 44th and Indiana. She was my sister’s friend but I soon developed a special relationship with her. It would take a long time to explain what the relationship was because it was more like a feeling than anything else.

  I loved her, oh yes, of course, I loved her, I was in love with her, but that was unavoidable. First off, you’d have to love a girl-woman as lovely as she was at fourteen-fifteen.

  She was exotic for 44th and Indiana Avenue. If she had placed a ticlak in the center of her forehead and draped a sari around her slender body, she could’ve been Indira Gandhi’s daughter.

  We knew she was slightly different but there were no anthropologists measuring heads on 44th Street, no authorities who knew what to tell us about a girl whose mother looked like a Gypsy, who sat on the front porch with bracelets on both arms from elbow to wrist, huge bangled earrings and gaudy skirts that trailed around her ankles and had a brother named Fuad.

  Eventually, we discovered that Cozette’s family was African-American-Egyptian. But prior to that she was simply this beautiful little slender girl with a smile that made friends out of people who wanted to kick her ass because she had naturally straight black hair, and a profile that should’ve tipped us off about her connection to the Pyramids.

  I grew to love Cozette more and more, the older we got. It wasn’t what you’d call a lascivious love. It was a truly romantic love. I can remember days of waiting to see her walking down the street on her bird legs, a full skirt wrapped around her thin body, a luscious glow in her face.

  Sometimes we’d walk a block together, or simply talk. Sometimes, while we talked, we’d hold hands. It was like a custom with the two of us, like two people who had designed their own cultural habits.

  We, my family, moved from 44th Street, of course, to 39th street, to 51st Street, to the Westside, to 35th Street, to St. Lawrence, to wherever. But I always managed to figure out a way to see Cozette.

  The time frames began to stretch. Sometimes I wouldn’t see her for a year, we were off on our journeys. When we did see each other we’d hug and hold onto each other for hours.

  We didn’t ask each other things like, “Are you married?”

  “Where’ve you been?” “What’s happening with your brother/sister?” No none of that stuff. We’d just hold onto each other.

  How many of us had survived 44th and Indiana? What the hell was there to ask questions about? If we were alive we knew we had accomplished great things.

  The time frame eventually stretched into years. I went half way ’round the world with Cozette on my mind. And returned.

  Back in Chicago after skiing in Siberia, running with the bulls in Pamplona, living on the island of Lesbos, freaking out in Germany, wandering thru the Brazilian jungle called Rio de Janeiro, different stuff.

  Back in Chicago, the House of Eng. I prepared myself for a couple days before, I went running on the lake front, stayed away from rum n’coke, things like that.

  I dressed down for my return to the House; I wanted the food to get the attention, not me. A tiny splash of Snif
f-Me-Sweet on both cheeks and I was ready.

  The sign in the elevator said “House of Eng.” I relaxed a bit. The elevator doors opened and once again it was there for me.

  The snooty bartender, the long bar, the soft, red and yellow atmosphere. I was in my groove.

  The time was right (3:30 p.m., at least three hours before the dinner time gang made their appearance).

  “I’ll have a daiquiri.”

  He recognized me, of course, but he wasn’t into doing recognition scenes, he was into making the best daiquiris in the world. I looked through the arch at the end of the bar, into the cavernous dining room. Mmmmmmmmmm …

  The House of Eng. I sipped the daiquiri and couldn’t resist smacking my lips with pleasure. The bartender lowered his nose a half inch and almost smiled.

  It was still there, that ambience that money can’t create, the elegance that develops when good taste is present. I felt at ease in the place.

  The maitre d’ put in a discreet appearance at my left shoulder.

  “Will you be having dinner with us, sir?”

  “Yes, you may reserve a table for me, I’ll be in the dining room shortly.”

  “Whenever you wish, sir.”

  The lady wore dragon silks and moved like a ghost. She took me back to a cluster of moments. The time I had lunch with this major league beauty who turned out to be a dud.

  “Why don’t they have chop suey on the menu? I love chop suey.”

  My dinner with brother Eli, his first civilian meal after ten years of dining at Statesville Penitentiary.

  “Damn man, who in the fuck tol’ you about this place?”

  Any my times alone, when I was privileged to have enough coins in pocket to treat myself to the six course dinner that started with “wonderful egg drop soup” and ended with “delightful lobster.”

  Looking around, taking it all in. I was almost not surprised to see her sitting on the terrace, a dreamy expression on her face. It seemed so natural that she’d be there.

  I resisted the impulse to hop off my stool to rush out and embrace her, sat still instead and studied her. The Gypsy-Egyptian profile had thickened a smidgeon and she was five pounds heavier on top; Cozette!

  Cozette, Cozette, Cozette. I slid off the stool and made my way around the bar, thru the French windows and out onto the terrace.

  She looked at me carefully, not showing surprise either, and floated over into my arms. Lord only knows how long we stood there, cinched together.

  “I was wondering when I’d see you again, it’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, it has been a long time.”

  One of the waitresses came out onto the terrace and diplomatically steered us back to Cozette’s table.

  “Shall I cancel your table inside, sir?”

  “Yes, cancel his table”

  We had the shy feeling for the first time, but there was still no need to go back to the past for anything, we had that covered. We could take it from now.

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  “No, I just decided to take the day off from work and treat myself to dinner at the House.”

  The hip people always called it “The House.” We smoothly rearranged for me to be seated at her table on the terrace.

  The lustrous glow on her face told me everything; she was healthy and happy.

  “Cozette, this is July 25, 1991, and I love you do you know that?”

  “Yes, I do know that. And do you know that I love you too.”

  The courses began to arrive while we were telepathically communicating. We touched fingers spooning in our soup, smiled idiotically at each other munching on rumaki and did an ethereal melt down with curried shrimps.

  I think I asked her to marry me with a glance, she consented with lowered eyelids and nine months later, gave birth to twin boys.

  Naturally, it flowed to an end, that was the beauty of the House Eng service, it didn’t stop abruptly by having a uniformed monkey throw a bill in your face. It flowed to an end.

  Was it an expensive restaurant? Hard for me to say because everything I experienced there was worthwhile.

  Six-thirty p.m. already, the dinner crowd was beginning to surround us. We gently put the twins to bed and took a dreamy walk down the hall to our own bedroom.

  “Phil, I have to go now, someone is waiting.” I paid the tab, gave my usual generous tip and stepped into the elevator with Cozette. We hugged going down.

  Strange, when I think back on it, how seldom we kissed, and when we did kiss it was like our lips embracing, rather than one of those soap opera head swiveling-tongue twining things.

  Tropical Chicago evening, a few desperados on the fringes. I walked her to her car. What was there for us to say?

  “I’ll always love you, Phil.”

  “I’ll always love you too, Cozette.”

  And she was gone. I felt tempted to go back up to the House and do it over again, hoping that the process would be the catalyst for her reappearance. But it was crazy to think like that and I let it go.

  I haven’t seen Cozette since that day, about ten years ago this month, and when I was in Chicago last summer I discovered that the House of Eng had disappeared.

  Literally, the place had disappeared. There was no forwarding address, no House of Eng Number Two or any of that, it just didn’t exist anymore. I was sick for two days after I made the discovery.

  I come to this place about once every other week because it reminds me of the House, a little.

  Cozette? I feel certain our paths will cross sometime this year, if I’m lucky.

  Black Style

  The African-Americans in Chicago must be the most stylish people of African descent anywhere on the planet.

  Eurocentrically oriented types are fond of saying, “They’re like Parisians.” The French should be so lucky.

  Maybe if France had a 47th Street and King Drive, an 87th Street, or Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor Homes, a Maxwell Street or any of a number of streets in between where African people parade, they might be able to claim a piece of this.

  The parade started thousands of years before the Mayflowers’ dregs were vomited onto these holy shores, when African tourists and traders bopped around in Mexican port cities and refused to spend too much time in Minnesota because of the weather.

  They left a bunch of hip skulls lying around in Olmec land for future racists to try to discredit.

  Some of the Chicago styles hint at supernatural origins; check out the brother in the burgundy and ink black, the sister in deep red and egg yolk yellow, the tall couple in sea blue and cloudy white.

  The stuff is so out …

  From the depths of the roachiest ghetto to the penthouses of the elite we can be certain that we’ll be seeing Black Style …

  The question has been the subject for debates amongst the cognoscenti for years, we decided to take it to the people.

  The Chicago Sister

  Willie Daniels, retired, dedicated whist player.

  “O, yeahhh, she does exist and I can tell you all about her. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that she’s a Southern-souled woman, people most likely came up from Africa, Mississippi, Ghana, Georgia, Nigeria, Tennessee or Soweto, Alabama, somewhere like that, if you know what I mean? And she got that in her blood.

  That city thang is strictly on the surface. Go down half a inch ’n you gon’ git some South, I guarantee you that.

  I’m not gonna sit here and play true confession with you, but I can tell you some thangs. Back in the good ol’ days before people became outrageously violent and filled with diseases that we don’t have cures for, there was a type of woman that you couldn’t find no where else but ’n Chicago.

  She was a woman that was brimming over with love and was sweet as a honeycomb. You could find them in the churches and in the night clubs.

  Let me explain that … back then a night club wasn’t considered the worse place in the world. People used to go to the clubs to hear Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Lightening Hopkins and people like that, drink a little beer and get up and go to church the next morning.

  In some cases what you’d be listening to was a continuation of what you had heard the night before, musically.

  I’m not trying to say that the club was exactly the same as the church, not by a long shot. In some cases the church was a helluva lot livelier than the club, once the preacher got to preachin’ and the sinners got to moanin’ ’n the sisters got to singin’.

  Yeah sir, I know that there’s a creature called the Chicago Sister ’cause I was married to one of ’em for thirty-seven years, Lord rest her soul. You play?”

  Carl Freeman, Sociologist/Bachelor

  “Well, in my opinion, if there ever was a “Chicago Sister” she went the way of the dinosaur, if I’m to believe what my father and the men from his generation have told me.

  The sweetness and generosity of spirit that they talk about is dead. I mean, let’s face it, I’m thirty years old, got a decent career going for myself and if I meet sister whose in the same field I’m in, we’re apt to become competitors before we become lovers.

  And there’s a sixty-forty chance that she would win the competition based on the sexist racism that’s prevalent these days.

  If I meet a lady whose above my head careerwise, she’s likely to dismiss me because she’s looking for bigger game. And I damn sure ain’t going to try to find my soulmate in the Robert Taylor Homes or Cabrini Green.

  I don’t know who this “Chicago Sister” is. Where can I find one?”

  Ardella Harp, high school music teacher—divorced.

  “Of course, there’s a Chicago Sister, who could possibly doubt that she exists? I’d be invalidating myself if I said she doesn’t exist. Who is she, how do you define her?

  Well I’m tempted to use some incredibly non-standard English and say—she is me, that’s who she be!

  Where did she acquire those rare traits that are used to classify a Chicago Sister? It would take more time than you have paper for me to sit here and try to answer that one. And you’ve clearly got to understand that the answer would only be coming to you from this sister’s perspective.