33. Epilogue | Thelma
Epilogue | Thelma
The roux for the gumbo had been cooking low and slow since morning.
By four o'clock, every inhale made Thelma's mouth water.
Papa Louie did his roux in a cast-iron pot older than he was — it had belonged to his mother and her mother before her.
The smell of it, dark and deep and endless, made the bar feel timeless.
"Smells like it's almost ready, baby," Miss Virgie said, peering toward the pot over the rim of her gin.
"I just can't tear myself away from that smell." Thelma came away from the stove and sat anyway, so close to Miss Virgie that their shoulders touched.
"Mm-hm." Miss Virgie patted her knee. "Why don't you let us old folks handle things back here. Go on and finish setting up."
Thelma poured Miss Virgie another gin without being asked, and went out to the bar.
By the time she came back to check the pot, the roux had gone that last shade darker Papa Louie always waited for. He gave her the nod that meant it was done. She moved the pot to the back burner to hold its heat and let it simmer low while the room filled in around it.
The bar was filling up fast now. It was the second year CORE had thrown its Christmas party at Louie's, and this year it had outgrown the room — folding chairs borrowed from three different churches, tables pushed to the walls, people trickling in with covered dishes and bottles, faces Thelma had come to know across a hundred meetings and marches and long nights at this same bar.
It didn't look so different from the rent party two years back, Thelma thought, ladling gumbo into bowl after bowl — the same crowded warmth, the same instinct that had gotten them through that time.
Except this time, Thelma Blake herself was hosting the festivities, which meant it was an elegant affair.
Each table had CORE pamphlets peppering it like menus at a fine dining restaurant, and CJ had drawn little Black Santas on every one.
Thelma had even talked Louie into pouring the top-shelf liquor — at a modest markup, of course.
The Louisiana Weekly sent a young man with a notepad, and a photographer she didn't recognize circled the piano, waiting for the right light.
Oretha had invited them, not-so-subtly tipping them off that Thelma Blake would be there.
"Won't hurt us to have a friendly write-up for the holidays," she'd said.
So Thelma wasn't just a hostess that night — she was a spokeswoman, smiling for the camera between ladling bowls, answering the same three questions in different orders, saying CORE's name every chance she got.
"Miss Blake, is it true you're getting back into recording?" the reporter asked.
"Now where'd you hear a rumor like that?" She handed him a bowl instead of an answer.
He laughed, wrote something down anyway, and worked through the usual questions — Hollywood, the pictures, why she'd driven off that cliff in California.
All that trouble two years back — the house arrest, the lawyers, the headlines that wouldn't let it go — had somehow only made the press want more of her, not less, and her agent had been all too happy to have her back on his roster because of it.
She let most of it sit and steered the rest where she wanted it to go.
"It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when half this state's still finding new ways to keep a Negro from a ballot box.
" Thelma shifted, her voice taking on the old stage command she used to fill a room with, no microphone needed.
"The Voting Rights Act passed in August, and folks want to call that the finish line.
It's not. It's the starting gun. There's parishes in this state that haven't registered a Negro voter yet.
That fight doesn't end because Washington signed a paper. It's only just begun."
Then she saw Dom cutting through the crowd — sharp in her signature black suit, a Christmas-red tie at her throat. Dom winked, and Thelma felt herself glow.
Dom reached her and slid an arm around her waist. The reporter's brows furrowed. "And you're — Miss Blake's bodyguard?"
"Close enough." Dom flexed her arm subtly. "My job's keeping Thelma Blake safe. From anything that might threaten her. Or anyone." She shot him a pointed look, and he cleared his throat and found an excuse to walk away.
"I think you need a break." Dom took the ladle from her hand, set it down, and steered her by the wrist through the kitchen door, out of the noise and the light, into the dark little storeroom. Thelma's shoulders dropped. She looked up at Dom.
"Thanks for the rescue. I needed that."
"I noticed."
Thelma stretched up and kissed her. Dom's arms wrapped around her and pulled her in tight, and Thelma melted into them.
"Let's just stay back here for the rest of the party."
"And miss Papa's gumbo?"
"Couldn't miss that."
"Sorry. Duty calls." Dom nodded toward the door. "Go be famous."
They went back out just as the gumbo was served, bowls stacked three deep along the bar.
Oretha caught her by the sleeve before she picked up the ladle. CJ was right behind her, grinning like he'd swallowed a secret.
"I still haven't thanked you properly." Oretha nodded toward the piano, where Papa Louie had framed the September Ebony—Thelma's face on the cover—and hung it beside his old photograph of Louis Armstrong and a framed copy of his own record from a few years back.
"You didn't have to mention the drive in that article.
Half our new volunteers walked in here saying they read about it. "
"It's so cool you're famous again," CJ said, still staring at the cover like he hadn't seen it a hundred times already.
"Wasn't going to sit for a magazine spread and let it go to waste," Thelma said.
"Well, it worked." Oretha squeezed her arm, then let CJ take over.
"Tell her the rest," Oretha said.
"WDSU wants to run a segment on the drive," CJ said. "National wire's sniffing around it too. They want you standing next to the announcement when we make it."
"Say yes," Oretha said. Not a question.
Thelma looked between the two of them—CJ still buzzing, Oretha already halfway back toward the kitchen to holler for more gumbo—and felt a warmth settle in her chest. "Yes," she said. "Of course, yes."
Later, with the pot scraped clean and the reporter gone, Papa Louie moved to the piano without being asked. The crowd shifted without instruction, clearing space.
Papa Louie tapped his glass until the room quieted. "Thank y'all for coming out tonight." He glanced at Thelma, then Dom. "I want to invite my family up here to close us out with a song. Forgive me if it ain't a Christmas one. But it's the song that brought us together."
Dom moved before Papa finished talking, CJ trailing right behind her. The three climbed up around the piano like they'd rehearsed it, though none had. Dom turned and waved Oretha up too, then Miss Virgie, then Doris Jean, ignoring every protest.
"He said family," Dom said, as if that settled it.
By the time they'd all wedged themselves around the piano, there was barely room left for Papa's hands on the keys. Someone shoved the microphone into Thelma's hand before she could reach for it, and she laughed, delighted, and took it.
Thelma started low on "This Little Light of Mine," almost talking more than singing, until the words pulled her in.
Dom joined next, an alto smooth enough that half the room turned to find its source.
CJ came in last, off-key but giving it everything, grinning through every wrong note as if that were half the point.
Then the whole room joined, uneven and warm, entirely unbothered by how it sounded.
Thelma had just signed a recording contract, still hush between her and her agent—she hadn't told a soul. But standing here, singing this song surrounded by these people, she knew: when she cut her record, it would start with this song.
She leaned against Dom, feeling the vibration of Dom's voice, Dom's arm coming around her, and sank into the song.
Here, she wasn't the Thelma Hollywood had thrown away, nor Elle Brown, the woman who'd tried to disappear behind a bar.
She was Thelma Blake—a name, a platform, a family, a love—a light that would continue to shine.