Heading to Marjorie’s, I presume.
Her presence beside me, all stoic, gave me a start. She seemed not to mind the rain. Or not to know it was raining.
You’re heading to Marjorie’s, I presume, she said again, taking a pair of thin black woolen gloves out of her bag. But you don’t know how to get there, she added, and took a long black woolen scarf out of her bag. I could tell by looking at you.
Her English sounded faintly accented. Caribbean, perhaps. African, perhaps. The skin on her face was deep black and flawless and probably still silky smooth. The whites of her eyes shone in the gloom. Only the slight gray in her hair — a short Afro — gave away her age.
Is it that obvious? I asked, and she did up the buttons on her black raincoat and folded her arms and said she could tell by the day, by the time, by the subway station on the corner of 162nd and Amsterdam, by the expression on my face, by the fact that there was always one to be found standing there, on that corner. She took out of her bag a black felt cloche hat, bell-shaped, 1920s style. You always find someone looking lost in the middle of Harlem? I asked her. Or you always find someone with an expression on his face that says he’s desperately searching for the way to Marjorie’s? And I smiled with a mixture of shame and solace. Something like that, she said. Come on. It’s this way, child. She had already started to walk. I hurried and took a final drag on my cigarette and, crushing it out on the ground, discovered with pleasant surprise that under the thick folds of her black raincoat, splashing indifferently through the puddles, was a pair of bloodred cowboy boots.
SO IT’S YOUR FIRST TIME, THEN?
I was surprised at how slowly and gracefully she walked. As if following a rhythm. As if she were a model on a catwalk: elegant, exotic, aware of being watched. As if she were in no hurry to arrive and get out of the rain. Several times I offered her my umbrella — flimsy and fragile in the wind — but she didn’t notice, or didn’t care, or didn’t want to get too close to a stranger. Rain was dripping from the brim of her cloche hat. I was still entranced by her bloodred boots. Perhaps because of the bloodred color. Perhaps because I’d never myself owned cowboy boots. Too spineless.
Yes, my first time, I said. A friend sent me a postcard, I told her, with a photo of Marjorie in a long turquoise dress, or maybe a mint green dress, I said, and ebony hands, and the address of the apartment on Edgecombe Avenue, I said, but without telling me much more. I considered getting out the postcard and showing it to her, as evidence. You don’t know who Marjorie is, then? she asked. I said sort of, said that I knew a bit. We stopped on the corner of 161st and Amsterdam. Look, they’re heading over there, she said, pointing at a couple holding a folded map. And them too, pointing at another group of pedestrians. And him, she said, pointing at an older gentleman in jacket and tie and carrying a big black case. How do you know? I asked. She smiled or almost smiled in the darkness. Many a Sunday, child.
The light changed and we began to cross the street.
Marjorie Eliot, that’s her name, she said. For years she’s been opening her apartment on Sundays, every Sunday, without taking a break or a vacation, ever since one Sunday back in 1992, when her son died. She fell silent. A sharp gust of wind struck us head-on. Every Sunday a jazz concert, she continued. Parlor jazz. At four in the afternoon. In the living room of her own apartment. With different musicians. The musicians come and go. Novice musicians and famous musicians and musician friends of hers. And it’s always free. She always welcomes anyone who wants to come to her home and listen to a couple of hours of jazz, and that’s a lot of people. She paused, took a deep breath, and with a soothing, almost secretive voice, she whispered: And all that to honor the memory of her son, through music.
We turned left. She asked me my name. Very pleased to meet you, Eduardo, she said. My name’s Shasta. There are some names that shimmer, it occurred to me then, or perhaps it occurs to me now. There are names you long to shout. She asked me where I was from and I told her Guatemala, that I was only in New York for a few days, just passing through. I considered telling her I was there, passing through, to receive some Guggenheim money — God love it, wrote Vonnegut, or Vonnegut’s narrator — that soon, if I ever got over my fears and demons, I would use to travel to Poland, to Łódź, my grandfather’s hometown. But I didn’t say any more. And she didn’t ask any more, accustomed, I’m sure, like all New Yorkers, to the fact that everybody there is just passing through, that everybody there is on their own ridiculous pilgrimage, that the whole world is nothing but a handful of salt.
We crossed St. Nicholas Avenue. That way, she said, signaling with a glance, is St. Nick’s Pub, Harlem’s legendary jazz club. Ah, the old Poospatuck, I said, and she, looking askance, almost complicit, threw me a half smile. I knew something about the history of St. Nick’s Pub. I knew that when it first opened, in the thirties, it was called the Poospatuck Club, after a tribe native to New York. Later, in the forties, it was named the Rendezvous, by its new owner, Charles Luckeyth Roberts, or Luckey Roberts, the great stride pianist, whose span on the keys was so wide and so quick, it’s been said, because he had the skin between his fingers surgically cut. Later, in the fifties, adding opera to the repertoire, the new owners called it the Pink Angel — because, it’s been said, it was a popular haunt for homosexual men. And lastly, since the sixties, St. Nick’s Pub.
We came to Edgecombe Avenue. On the far side of the road was a small strip of trees. On the far side of the trees was a highway. From the far side of the highway, in the distance, we could perhaps hear the gentle flow of the Harlem River. We turned right. I didn’t say anything, hoping she would talk more, simultaneously eager to arrive and wanting never to arrive. Almost at once, she stopped at the black door of a huge classical building, and gave me a look. A look filled with something. Kindness, perhaps. Weariness, perhaps. The skin on her face, because of the humidity or because of the light coming from an ancient streetlight, seemed to burn in the night. She said: Marjorie Eliot says she started to host jazz concerts in her apartment, after the death of her son, as a way of surviving Sundays.
NUMBER 555 EDGECOMBE AVENUE has many names. Some call it the Paul Robeson Residence. Others, the Roger Morris Building. Others, the Triple Nickel. Still others, Count Basie Place. Built in 1916, for its first twenty-five years it was a segregated residence: whites only. But around 1939, when Harlem’s character changed, so did the rules and restrictions at 555 Edgecombe Avenue, and it became the residence of distinguished and famous members of Harlem’s African-American community. Like musician Count Basie. Composer and pianist Duke Ellington. Sax player Coleman Hawkins. Writer Langston Hughes. Judge (and the first African-American on the Supreme Court) Thurgood Marshall. Baseball player (and the first African-American in the major leagues) Jackie Robinson. Boxer (and the first African-American on the pro golf circuit) Joe Louis. Singer Lena Horne. Writer Zora Neale Hurston. Actor and political activist Paul Robeson. Pianist Marjorie Eliot.
Go on in, child, go on in.
She had taken out a bunch of keys, had opened the heavy black iron door.
I closed my umbrella and went quickly inside as she held the door for a group of tourists, then guided them toward the elevator, told them to go on up to the third floor. I stood looking at the lobby: large, ostentatious, the whole place clad in green, gray, and beige marble, with friezes sculpted in plaster and meticulously adorned in gold leaf. On the walls were poorly maintained gaudy bas-reliefs of chubby children at play, and chubby children with flutes, and chubby children riding on the backs of goats. There was a huge stained-glass window in the ceiling, also in poor condition. When I was a little girl, she said to me, looking upward and shaking the water from her raincoat, they decided to paint black over it and cover it with wood planks. She took off her gloves. She took off her cloche hat. She ran a hand through her short salt-and-pepper Afro, while the pink tip of her tongue emerged and ran over her top lip, then her bottom lip, maybe licking away the raindrops. To protect the window, she said. From an expected atomic bomb.