10
The Dunbar paid for Rosalinda and Delroy Teal — the parents of the murdered girl — and all seven of they surviving children to come to LA as guests of the hotel and the legal fund of the NAACP. Saturday, after the murder, the Central Avenue Colored Women’s Brigade held a rally and a march from the steps of the Dunbar down Central to the river. Where Magnolia Teal was fount.
Fount by me, folks was saying.
’Bout five hundred protesters showed up for the march. The speechifying was led by Mrs. Charlotta Bass, editor of the colored paper, the California Eagle. That tiny lady was as loud and convincing as a Holiness preacher. The real target of the murders, she said, was Negro life and culture itself.
“I want to address the Negro women, here and across our great city,” she said. “Ladies, it is up to us to do something about the violence being done to our bodies, our hopes, our families, and especially our children. Many are the stories of heartrending courage that Negro women of the slave period have handed down to us. They endured as our sisters, our daughters, our mothers, and the mothers of a hundred rebellions — all of which our standard history texts have conveniently forgotten. Well, we have not forgotten. And we will not fail to root out this cancer festering in our midst.”
The crowd got quiet when Mrs. Bass stepped aside and introduced the parents of the murdered girl.
The Teals put me in the mind of my own ma and pa. Unschooled, dirt-poor laborers. They words was sorrowful and heartbreaking. They sobbed the whole time they was talking. So did they children. All the speakers expressed outrage at the murder of one more colored girl — four since June.
Cops, white and colored, was out in force. Marchers called them buzzards. Eagle reporters passed out posters with pictures of the girls — Etna Pettipeace, Marietta James, Paulina Crabtree, and Magnolia — all who, Mrs. Bass said, was defiled and left like garbage on the street.
Uncle Balthazar made me meet the Teals. It all but wrecked me. They was kissing and hugging and thanking me for finding Magnolia, when all I did was trip on her. Their mistake kept me embarrassed the whole time I was meeting them. Uncle Balthazar seen I was too emotional to hang with the Teals. Told me I could take off.
On the way downtown, I fixed posters on every post and tree I passed. Following the rally, all the colored hotels — the Dunbar, the Monarch, the Clark, etcetera — pledged escort services 24/7 for any colored womens and children requesting them. I volunteered.
11
My job as factotum gave me the perfect perch to learn my new hometown. My duties took me into every corner of the Dunbar and acrost the far-flung districts of the city. Uncle Balthazar told me places a Negro could go, and which ones they couldn’t. My uniform was my ticket in, he said. White folks welcome coloreds long as they think theys working for them. My coworkers and several of the old customers took pride in schooling me.
12
Sister Chimes was my standout teacher even in that bunch. One of her most thought-stirring ideas was the “golden coffin.” She explained it one day when we was delivering gumbo and sweet potato pies to some rich white folks in the Hollywood Hills. They was hosting a fundraiser for LA’s mayor, Fineas A. Stankey, who lived in a segregated neighborhood just above the Hollywoodland sign on Mount Lee. Mayor Stankey was a Canadian boy. Had a fondness for hamhocks and greens, but not for the peoples that cooked ’em.
The delivery shoulda been done by bellhops or waitstaff, but Miss Chimes, boss of housekeeping, insisted on delivering it. We met at the Dunbar garage off 39th, and picked out the longest limo in the fleet to tote the grub. She wanted to show them crackers that Black folk could arrive in a limo too, if they felt like it.
We delivered the order and Miss Chimes fount a wide-open space overlooking the city. Dusk was coming. We parked, got out, walked a minute, under the trees. Directly, Miss Chimes pulled out a cigarette. “Gotta match?” she said. She smoked it down to a twinkle. Mashed it out and said, “Let’s ride.”
We took the limo west, down Sunset. Past the Strip. The expensive hotels. The mansions in Beverly Hills. Miss Chimes pointed out places where movie stars lived and the famous restaurants for white folks where exciting things was happening. Next, the Pacific Ocean rose behind the hills, wide and black as the sky. Snow-white waves curled along the bottom of the blackness, marking the waterline. The boulevard curved back and forth under the headlights.
We reached Malibu and rolled south. Past Santa Monica, Venice, past the scrap of beach set aside for colored folks. “White folks calls it the Inkwell,” Miss Chimes said. We took Washington east, back acrost the city. It was a thrilling and breathtaking trip.
I was still tingling when we dropped the limo off at the garage. I asked Miss Chimes if I could escort her back to her quarters at the Dunbar. The killer was still loose, after all, and although I was pretty sure Miss Chimes was capable of kicking the ass of any street hoodlum she met, having a friend at your back in a fight with a monster has advantages.
I said it and Miss Chimes looked surprised, like she was amazed I even knew her name.
Neon lit the avenue. We could see the Dunbar just ahead, growing brighter as we approached. The King Cole Trio was headlining next door at the Club Alabam. Fans was milling in the street waiting for the doors to open for the eleven o’clock show.
Miss Chimes paused. I lit her cigarette, and we stepped into the street to admire the scene. After a while, she said, “So what did you think about your tour of our beautiful city?”
“My tour?”
“The hotels, the mansions, the ocean.”
I took a good while expressin’ amazement for all I had seen.
Then, bluntly, Miss Chimes said, “Well, my wide-eyed worm, ain’t none of that for you — the hotels, the mansions, the ocean — you ain’t welcome in none of that. None.” She turnt to face the avenue, waved her hand acrost it. “Look at all this joy and prosperity. Cadillacs and jalopies scrubbed and waxed like they heading to a wedding. Eager customers, flashin’ and frontin’ everywhere you look, broke as a joke but dressed to the nines. What you think of that?”
“Beautiful,” I said, confused a little, trying to figure where her speech was heading.
“Well, this is your coffin,” Miss Chimes said. “A golden coffin stuck in the mud beside a deadly river. There ain’t no signs on the streets showing the walls of the coffin, but if some lost Negro step a foot beyond First to the north, Alvarado to the west, Slauson south, or cross the river, east, they begging for a beatdown. Our liberty is an illusion. Look around you, boy! Watch! Listen! The neon, the moonlight, the music, the dancing, the glow of prosperity, the hundreds of colored homeowners nestled safe, hopeful, and happy all around us — that is an illusion too.”
“Illusion?” was all I could say.
“Tell me, Wormboy, what do you call a trough — a gorgeous, golden trough, filled with pretty flowers, that every day gets dumped on with fresh flowers and soil? Well, soon the trough fills up. But there ain’t no way for the flowers that’s already inside to crawl out. Nowheres to get sunlight nor nourishment. No air. And the gardeners tending the box just keep dumping on more dirt and flowers, covering the pretty flowers already inside. Soon, them at the bottom — once sweet-smelling and exotic — grows withered and stale. Start to suffocate. Rot. Dying inside the trough. That’s what’s happening on Central now, but we can’t see it for the golden walls, dazzling us, seducing us to keep inside. It’s a coffin, a golden coffin. Life and beauty overhead, all untouchable. And in the beautiful coffin, no air, no sunlight, no escape.”