Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Gabrielle’s eyes flicked over me as she held a finger up, finishing her call.
“It’s all right, Mavis. I’ve got a driver going in your direction most mornings.
It’ll be early, though, around six. Is that all right?
” She listened, a broad smile illuminating her face.
“Fred will be over first thing. Call me back if you run into any other trouble.” She hung up the phone, turning her attention back to me.
“Well, aren’t you a bunny.” Her eyes traveled up and down the full length of my body with such open admiration that I almost gasped.
“I’m Jimi,” I said, flustered, pointing vaguely in the direction I’d come from. “Jo Ann said you needed some help.”
Her presence rattled me, and I couldn’t figure out why.
“Sure do,” she said, reaching for my hand with both of hers and holding it in some approximation of a handshake. “I’m Gabby, and I’ll be glad for any help you have to give,” she said as the phone rang again.
She plucked it off the cradle as I tugged off my jacket, grateful for the slight relief.
My temperature was still climbing, and I had to marvel at my seemingly endless capacity to feel so unmoored, still, by this kind of youthful attraction.
It seemed no matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I tried to lock this part of myself away, some part of me was undeniably, painfully connected to the world around me.
Watch me, Gabby mouthed, the phone nestled in the soft bend of her neck. “Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Gabby speaking, how can we help?” Efficiently, she recorded the caller’s name, destination, desired time of arrival, and phone number in the book and location, promising a callback.
“We’ve been getting calls like that all afternoon,” she said, running down the list of drivers for the callback. “We’ve got to build up the pool of drivers and coordinate, so when all of this happens, folk can still get to work. How well do you know the area?”
“Not well at all. I’m down from Chicago, writing the piece on the WPC for The Chicago Defender.”
Gabby beamed, pausing her search. I never tired of this reaction to my profession.
“A writer! I love to read. It’s my favorite thing to do when I’m not teaching.
There’s nothing quite so alluring as a talented pen,” she said wistfully.
Then she turned the full force of her attention on me.
“Tell me what it’s like. What exactly do you do for The Chicago Defender? ”
It didn’t matter what she’d asked me; I would’ve told her anything just to keep those eyes focused on me.
“I’ve been there a little over a year,” I said, stumbling. “I cover the international wire, mostly.”
“International! But you’re so young!” Her eyes lit with interest. “You must’ve traveled to get a beat like that.”
“I have,” I confirmed.
“And you speak other languages? So, you’re skilled with the pen and the tongue,” she said, and at this her voice dipped low. I nodded, momentarily stunned when she unconsciously caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
Her brazenness felt like ice melting down my spine on a hot summer day.
Who was this young woman? I’d known her a handful of minutes; in the growing ocean of my life, it was but a drop of water’s worth of time.
We didn’t know each other at all, and yet there was recognition between us.
I’d felt it before. After all this time, I’d learned to recognize it—this mixture of desire and fear.
“You know,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially, bringing with her a rush of rose-scented perfume and the sweet musk of her pomade, “I teach English at Booker T. Washington High School. Maybe you’ll come to talk to my students if you’ve got time.
We’ve got a student paper, The Washingtonian.
They’d love to hear from a working writer and reporter. You can tell them about your travels.”
“I’d love to,” I said, a frothy feeling expanding in my chest, surprised at how swiftly my body and mind had responded to this woman. It wasn’t love. Not yet, but it was a prelude and a promise. It was something inside and outside of me telling me to listen. To follow.
The phone rang again, and we were off to work. The volume of calls increased throughout the evening. Gabby took a few more calls to demonstrate the routine and let me handle the rest.
I spoke with maids from outside the city arranging to get to their employers’ homes, elders arranging to get to Tom Johnson’s, a local Black pharmacist who had a parking lot to use, and also the names of drivers who could volunteer their time.
Gabby handled calling back and confirming rides, making our two-person system effortless and efficient.
The calls kept coming as we built up the complicated transportation web, coordinating pickups and drop-offs to ensure no one had to take the bus on Monday.
Two hours in, a woman named Martha dropped by with a plate of biscuits and fried chicken.
I munched the food down gratefully, so absorbed in work and in Gabby that I’d forgotten to eat.
It reminded me of my time with Eulalie, when the affluent personnes de couleur came together to secure their advance, and my time in London, helping with the orphanage, the intoxicating pull of helping others.
Wherever women came together for a greater cause, change was made.
Time continued to fly, and we worked until six, well into the winter night. I sagged into the seat after taking the last call for the night.
“You did good, Jimi. I couldn’t have done it without you,” Gabby said, tidying up. “Are you up for coming back tomorrow afternoon after church service?”
My skin tingled at the warmth of her praise.
I might’ve imagined it, but her gaze lingered, flicking over me, and the heat rose in my cheeks.
It didn’t make sense, as there were other leads I could be following, but I liked working with her, feeling truly useful for the first time in a long while.
More than that, I liked her. I wanted to talk to her, learn about her.
“I’d be happy to.”
“Great, see you tomorrow,” she said, beaming her smile bright, letting me know I’d made the right decision.
The next day, I attended the morning service, listening to the sermon and gathering bits for the story, immersed in the activity around me.
I’d attended various churches throughout my life, more because of local customs than anything else.
The pact with Death had loosened the grip of my mother’s religion on my soul, making me question the meaning of existence.
My extended life was a testament to the presence of a higher power, but as Death explained it, and the way my exposure to Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism had shaped my understanding of it, how one treated people mattered more than one’s religious denomination or attendance at formal worship.
Church members came to help, and ministers came by to organize. Everyone was motivated by the boycott’s success. Though I was an outsider, they drew me in, making me feel like a cog in a machine that was working its way to justice.
The best part of all was Gabby.
“All right then, favorite book?” I asked between calls.
She squinched her nose in a way that I’d come to know was her thinking face. “That’s not fair. How can you make me choose?” she said, shaking her head. “My favorite is whichever one I’m reading now.”
“So, which one?”
“Why in the world would you think I’m only reading one? I’m in the middle of Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and rereading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.”
“Three books at once?” I said, entering the last address. “How do you keep them all straight?”
Gabby shrugged, eyes twinkling. “I read by what I need. Zora’s great when you want to remember who you are and seek a life with love. I call it my book therapy.”
“Zora is great, indeed.” I hid my smile at my friend’s name.
I wondered how she was doing. I hadn’t seen her in years, not since those early days when she and Langston Hughes had gathered, working on stories.
I knew she was still alive, but there was no point in trying to see her, as how could I explain appearing the same more than thirty years later?
Time felt liquid as I worked with Gabby, the hours fleeting.
I craved more. That evening, I discovered that she was a widow with a five-year-old son named Winston.
That she ate slices of cake upside down to leave the frosting for last. She hated heels and preferred to walk around the room only in stockings to feel closer to the earth.
And she’d lost many family members in a fire set by the local KKK chapter, which had fueled her desire to do her part to change the American South and beyond.
I’d marveled at the number of folk doing the same I’d learned about—stretching themselves beyond every limit to try and make their part of the world a little bit better.
If not for themselves, then for others. It took no effort at all to conjure thoughts of the great many people who would do the opposite, but somehow that only made Gabby’s efforts shine more brightly.
Here she was, using her spare time and energy for a cause bigger than herself.
I’d used my words . . . but I’d always had to think about Death.
We worked late into the night, taking phone calls and planning for a rally at the Holt Street Church the next evening.
Emotions ran high, and the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and Women’s Political Council (WPC) leaders and ministers hoped to check in on the boycott’s effectiveness and help keep the masses under control.
The slightest spark of violence could ignite all the work and planning into a conflagration.
I hung up the phone and sighed, exhaustion and exhilaration tugging at my bones.
I watched Gabby on her last call of the evening, her stocking feet stretched across her desk and her red lipstick a little smudged along her mouth, as if she’d been kissed.
The gorgeous huskiness of her voice, deepened by overuse, made me think of Eartha Kitt’s music, and I closed my eyes.
The warmth of hands on my shoulders made my eyes snap open. I gazed up to find Gabby staring down at me, her mouth a perfect rose and the dim overhead lights leaving angelic balls of light across her brown skin.
“You have a birthmark near your collarbone.” She rested the pad of her thumb there, her touch brief but electric, sending a pulse through me. “At least you don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”
The joke tore from me a laugh I didn’t know I was capable of, shaking something loose within me.
We both followed the way her fingers gingerly traced my collarbone to the neck bow on my blouse, like she needed an excuse to make physical contact.
We stayed in that moment, bound by a connection bigger than ourselves that tightened the longer we were together.
She stopped laughing first and gazed into my eyes, and I couldn’t remember another time when I was as happy to just exist.
A door slammed at the front of the room, startling us both and disrupting the energy between us.
I jumped up. How much longer could I surrender to these feelings? “I should go.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Her eyes pleaded with me for honesty.
I took her hand and squeezed it. “No, nothing at all. I’ll see you tomorrow.
” I bade Gabby good night, pushing down my desire and tangled-up feelings about wanting to let the question of what if slide between us despite knowing how it would all end.
The faces of William, René, Rohan, and Adam flashed through my brain.
I walked back to my hotel buoyant and hopeful and nervous and electrified, all in one.
It had been good work, hard work, just the type of thing that would serve as proof of humanity’s goodness, and the time with Gabby filled up the cracks left behind by lost loves.
I knew that this all was for Death, but at that moment, in the quiet street with only the sounds of crickets for company, it was for me too.
I had forgotten that I couldn’t just look for what was wonderful in humanity.
I had to feel the wonder myself. I walked up the stairs, comforted but praying for the boycott’s success.
I’d write and file another story tonight.
Only in the morning would we know if all our work and the boycott would be successful.