Sing for Me Read online

  “My question exactly,” he says.

  He’s not wearing the dashing tuxedo of Friday night. He’s wearing a simple brown suit, a white shirt, a brown tie with thin gold stripes. The suit’s cut is a few years out of date, and there’s a sheen to the fabric that shows the wear that comes when cloth is at the cheaper end of the spectrum. But he’s neatly put together. There’s not a wrinkle from collar to cuff. That’s true of his white shirt and his striped tie, too.

  He either takes very good care of himself or there’s someone in his life that does.

  “Your voice.” He starts to say something else, but then he simply smiles. It’s like a light has been turned on inside him, and that light fills up the room.

  I can feel his warmth again, though he is standing some feet away. I can feel his warmth, and now I am warm, too, in spite of the draft from the window that stirs my hair.

  Am I looking at this man in exactly the same way that Nils looks at me? I look quickly down into the bucket of dirty water. “I didn’t realize anyone was listening or I would have kept my singing to myself.” I can’t see my reflection for the water’s cloudy surface.

  “Keep your singing to yourself and you’ll deny the rest of the world a lot of happiness.”

  I look up and his smile fades at my expression.

  “I don’t sing for the world. I sing for God.” My hands are tight fists. “I sing at church.”

  “God is bigger than church, don’t you think?”

  I feel a sudden, sharp need to stand up and defend myself. But my bare legs are soaked, my skirt the worse for wear, and I have no desire to look foolish. So I stay where I am and hold my head high.

  “Why are you here?”

  He takes a step back. I suppose he doesn’t want me to feel threatened. No wonder. Just last week I read a story in the Trib about a lynching. Something about a black man daring to consort with a white woman, and the consequences of that. If this news story is crossing my mind, I’d venture there are many more crossing his.

  But he doesn’t shrink into himself, as some men might. He stands at his full height. His gaze remains steady, though it’s cooled, regarding me, like I’m not who he thought I was, or I’m someone else, someone all too familiar. I drop the rag into the bucket and wrap my arms around myself to keep from shivering.

  “I haven’t been following you, Miss Sorensen, if that’s your concern,” he says quietly. “Sunday afternoons I help out the folks over at Hull House. They have a music program for the kids there. I teach piano lessons. Sometimes I lead their children’s chorus. One of the boys I teach lives just down the hall. He’s been getting into trouble lately, falling off the straight and narrow. His mother asked that I walk him home after practice. So I did. And I heard you singing. Now here we are.”

  We look at each other. Here we are.

  My face is burning hot. But he’s blushing, too. A color deep as ripe cherries rises beneath his dark skin.

  How can a man this familiar make my thoughts, not to mention ordinary conversation, so unfamiliar? More to the point, how can this man be so familiar?

  The radiator clangs, interrupting the growing quiet. I need to say something.

  “That’s kind, what you did. For that child,” I say.

  The color has crept down his throat; the flush accentuates the neat knot of his tie. He presses the back of his hand to his cheek as if testing for fever, then manages a shrug. “I wish someone had done the same for me. I might have been a different boy. As it is, I’m glad to be alive and able to help.”

  Again, the quiet. Again, the clang.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Sorensen, what brings you to this part of town?”

  I owe him an honest answer. I gesture at the bucket of filthy water, the rags on the floor, the state of things. “This is my job. I clean up other people’s places. I didn’t always, but now I do, and I will for some time to come, I imagine.”

  His expression softens again. I am as suddenly, inexplicably happy as I was a moment ago defensive.

  “With a voice like yours, why are you doing a job like this?” he asks.

  I sit back on my heels. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Miss Sorensen, everyone has a choice.”

  “I don’t.”

  He takes a deep breath. “All right. I’ve got to say it.” He gets down on his knees, too. I don’t know whether he’s going to make an appeal or he’s trying to see me eye to eye, or both. It doesn’t matter. Here he is, right in front of me. He clasps his hand before him as he did when he stood at the microphone on Friday night. Lets out that breath. “The Chess Men need a singer. We need her bad. You’d be perfect.”

  I hug myself tight, tighter. Blot. Spot. Soul, I think. But then, God help me, I think yes.

  “No,” I say. “I can’t.”

  “Why?” He unclasps his hands, and I remember his touch on my wrist.

  I say, “I told you why.”

  He shakes his head as if I did nothing of the sort. “Miss Sorensen, I love church. I love God. But I believe God made me a musician as well as a believer, and I believe God makes as many kinds of musicians as there are songs to sing. There’s not sacred music and worldly music. There’s good music. All good things come from God. That’s what I believe.”

  “You believe a lot of things.”

  He nods in all seriousness. “I do. For instance, I believe you loved the music on Friday night, worldly or not. I saw you, Miss Sorensen.”

  I don’t deny my love. I don’t confirm it, either.

  “It’s good music,” he says. “And you were born to sing it.”

  I reach into the bucket, pull out the rag, start swabbing the floor again. “You sound like my cousin Rob, saying crazy things like that.”

  “It’s not crazy. It’s good sense. The Chess Men need a singer. You need to sing.”

  And suddenly he’s singing in his low, husky voice:

  And if we ever part, then that might break my heart

  He laughs then, slapping his leg as if he’s just made the perfect argument and he’s delighted with it.

  “You know that song?” he asks, still laughing.

  I nod. I haven’t seen the picture in which the song is featured, Shall We Dance (the picture just came out, and anyway, I don’t go to the pictures), but I know from the radio that Fred Astaire sings it. And, yes, I know the lyrics, too.

  “ ‘You say tomato, I say tomahto,’ ” I mutter, swabbing at the floor.

  “That’s the ticket!” He slaps his leg again. “We may have been making different music lately, but it’s all the same good thing. And there’s money to be made, Miss Sorensen, if that makes any difference to you. Who knows? You might even make more than you do cleaning. I’d lay odds on you making as much.”

  I won’t look at him. I wring water from the rag, further dampening my already damp skirt. “This is my job.”

  “This job makes you happy?”

  What’s happy? I don’t say, swabbing the floor.

  “Because if it does make you happy, we could work around your schedule,” he says.

  “Please don’t make fun at my expense.” I glance over my shoulder at the window. The sun is lowering in the sky. Dusk is descending. The cold wind is rising. I need to finish here.

  “I’m not making fun. I’m dead serious.”

  My eyes are stinging, and it’s not from the vinegar. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  Suddenly he draws back from me, catching his breath as a thought strikes him. In a quiet, harsh voice he says, “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?”

  I look up at his tone, stunned. “No!” But partly it is, I realize as tears spill from my eyes.

  He’s looking at me as if he’s never seen a woman cry before. Slowly, tentatively, like I just might bolt and flee, he leans forward, gently presses his fingertips to my cheek, and brushes the tears away.

  His touch again. A fire that doesn’t hurt, that only lingers, warming me.
/>   “Forgive me, Miss Sorensen,” he says. “You’ve given me no cause to think that, let alone say it.”

  “Do you know Mahalia Jackson?” I sound like I can’t sing a note, the way my voice breaks.

  “Not personally. We don’t all know each other, you know.” He gives me a gentle smile to show that he’s not being mean. “I know her voice, though.”

  “I love her voice. I’d give almost anything to sing with her.”

  “Well, I’d give almost anything to accompany her. So we have that in common.”

  My tears are still wet on his fingertips. He doesn’t seem to want to wipe them dry. He looks down at them, and I wonder, from the puzzled expression on his face, if my tears feel strange against his skin. A white woman’s tears.

  The radiator clangs, and we both jump. We look at each other, and then in spite of ourselves, because of ourselves, we laugh.

  “Listen to us, talking on and on when we’ve got work to do,” he says.

  “We’ve got work to do?”

  He bites back a smile. “I’ll make a deal with you, Miss Sorensen.” He takes the rag from my hands. “I’ll help you clean for another song.” He swishes the rag in the bucket and then twists out the excess water. “Where should I start?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You didn’t say I couldn’t help.” He gives the rag a twirl.

  “I didn’t say you could. And I didn’t say I would, either. Sing, I mean.”

  “One thing at a time.” His smile again. That light. “Should I keep working on the floor?”

  Before I can stop myself, I’ve looked at the noisy radiator. I’ve been dreading the grim, gritty work it will be, digging all the dust and grime from between those coiled iron pipes.

  He follows my gaze. “Guess I’ll start there.”

  “Wait,” I say. “What’s your name?”

  “Theo.” He smiles his light. “Theo Chastain.”

  “You can call me Rose.”

  “Rose.” He nods like my name makes sense. And then he gets to work.

  Together it takes us only a little over another hour, and the place is as clean as it’s going to get. Theo helps me carry the cleaning supplies back down to the janitor’s closet. Two trips it takes with his help. Out on Marquette again, we find the street and sidewalks empty, which I know relieves me, so I imagine it does him, too. Still, if we linger, we might be seen. I don’t know what might happen then, and I’d rather not know. Most of Chicago—most of the world—is not Calliope’s.

  “No song?” His hands are clasped, as is his way. I give him a look that makes him heave a great sigh of defeat. He supplies my answer. “No song.”

  “I warned you.”

  “Another time maybe.” He looks thoughtfully past rooftops at the sooty sky. “Perhaps Tuesday night at seven o’clock?” He looks back at me. “You know where I’ll be.” He takes a piece of printed paper from his pocket and scribbles something across the top. “If you come on Tuesday, you’ll hear ‘Blow the Man Down’ like you’ve never heard it before, Rose, played especially for you. And if by any chance you decide to sing along . . . well, you’d be doing the Chess Men a mighty big favor.” He holds out the piece of paper. “I live with my mother and sister. I’ll tell them to take a message if you call and I’m not home.”

  I take the paper from his hands.

  “Please come on Tuesday, Rose. Please.”

  “I’ll try,” I hear myself say.

  I watch him walk away. He glances back and sees me watching, and his smile broadens. I smile back.

  When he disappears around the corner, I look down at the paper. He’s written a phone number across the top of the page. Below this is a sketch of a spired church. The African Methodist Church, it looks like from the type set beneath the picture.

  It’s a bulletin from this morning’s service.

  Like me, Theo was wearing his Sunday best because church came first. Then Hull House. Then the two of us together again. A miracle.

  As I walk toward the El, the streetlights flicker on. I start to count the lights. Then I count my steps. Then I’m counting the hours until Tuesday night—not because I’m going, just because I can. I have a choice, just like Theo said, and I choose to count the hours. Once I’ve counted them, I start to count a different kind of time passing. It’s four-four time, the meter to tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto.

  I’m boarding the El train when I remember the song’s title: “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

  But that doesn’t keep me from tucking his number into my pocketbook and clutching my pocketbook tightly beneath my arm so I don’t have to worry so much about losing it. That doesn’t stop me from hearing, again and again, the music of his Please.

  SEVEN

  It’s nearly five o’clock on Tuesday evening when I finish cleaning stairways and foyers; nearly six when I’m finally home. Rob will pick me up in less than half an hour. “That’s my girl!” he declared when, after much thought, I called him yesterday to say I’d like to go to the audition. “Not that I’m auditioning,” I told him (and myself). “There will be plenty of other singers for the Chess Men to choose from. I’m just going to listen—and if by any chance no one else shows up, well, then maybe I’ll help out. Maybe. Just until they find the right person. I don’t want them to lose their chance to perform.”

  Rob snickered at that. Snickered! “Right,” he said. “Your motives are pure. I understand, Rose.” I managed to ignore his knowing tone.

  Now I need to freshen up fast. But first I must make some kind of excuse to Mother. The truth is impossible.

  I find her in the kitchen. She gives me a frantic look and gestures expansively at the bags of flour, sugar, and cinnamon, the brick of butter, the bottle of oil, the mixing bowls spread across the table, the baking pan resting on the stove.

  “It might as well be Christmas! We’re having brunsviger!” Mother exclaims. “When I saw Nils at the National Tea today, we started talking about good food—Danish food. I asked him if he likes brunsviger as much as we do, and next thing I knew he’d purchased the ingredients for me, and next thing after that, I’d invited him over for dessert. He said he was tickled pink at the thought of brunsviger, which I think, Rose, is really the thought of you.”

  “Mother!” I imagine Nils, collecting and paying for things that are by no means staples, things that are in fact rare treats these days. I imagine him handing these things to Mother with a shy duck of his head, that shock of hair falling into his eyes.

  If it were any other night but tonight.

  Mother smiles at me. “Nils is generous. Quite the fellow. Now”—she flaps her hands—“go clean up, then bring Sophy back with you. You know how she loves to help. Hurry, Rose! He’ll be here shortly.”

  “I have other plans—”

  But I don’t get the chance to finish. Mother darts at me. “Change them! I’ve already told your father. He’s on his way home.” She turns me right around and pushes me down the hall to the bedroom, where Sophy sits in her chair by the window. Then, like that, Mother’s gone. I can hear her in the kitchen, unwrapping the wax paper from the precious brick of butter.

  Sophy gives me a bright-eyed, questioning look. “Hurt?”

  I look down. I’m clutching my chest. Mother’s strong-arming left me breathless, and now that I’m breathing again, my heart does ache. No wonder. My heart’s divided. The thought of a night with Nils is comforting. It would be so easy to stay here with him. We are easy together. Nils and I like the same, delicious food. We share many of the same memories. What are Theo’s memories? What kind of food does he like? And how have I become a person who sneaks around, doing things she’s been raised not to do, enjoying—no, embracing—things she’s been raised to reject?

  I tell Sophy that I’ll be right back. I go to the telephone that rests on the little table in the hallway. I dial Rob’s number.

  When my cousin realizes it’s me calling, he interrupts my hello to say he’s on h
is way out the door.

  “I can’t go.” Quickly, I tell him what’s happened. And then: “Dad will be here any minute.”

  That’s all I needed to say. Rob doesn’t respond, but I know he understands.

  “Well.” I put my hand to my chest. My heart aches again. “Mother needs my help now.”

  Rob says, “I’ll be by at our usual time.”

  I blink. “Our usual time?”

  “Like last time. Late, after everyone else has hit the sack. So you can’t take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to audition with one of the best up-and-coming groups in town. Calliope’s will still be there. We can at least enjoy the music.”

  From the kitchen, Mother yells my name. She is not the yelling type.

  “I’ll be outside your place at eleven o’clock. I’ll wait for ten minutes. If you haven’t climbed down that fire escape by that time, I’m going to knock on your door and wake your parents up. We’ll see what happens then.”

  “That’s blackmail!”

  “See you soon.”

  He hangs up the receiver. I stand in the hallway, considering Rob’s threat. My mad, maddening cousin. But then again, he’s right, isn’t he? I have a choice. I don’t have to call the whole thing off. Just part of it. And if Mother and Dad don’t know that I sometimes listen to that music in a place like Calliope’s—well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Will it?

  I set the receiver back into its cradle, go to the bedroom, freshen up fast, then carry Sophy into the kitchen and settle her as comfortably and securely as possible into her child-sized wheelchair.

  “The topping, please. Get to it, sweetheart.” Mother, kneading the brunsviger’s thick, doughy batter, nods at the necessary ingredients. I start mixing cinnamon into brown sugar, and next thing I know, I’m thinking of Theo—his hands holding a remnant of my childhood, the rose-patterned rag, the contrast between the faded pink-and-white cloth and his beautiful dark skin. Applying the whisk in smooth strokes, I remember the curve of Theo’s back as he bowed over the radiators. He took off his suit jacket and tie, working, and beneath his neatly pressed shirt, I saw the shape of his ribs, his shoulders. He rolled up his sleeves, and I saw his arms, the muscles there. When he turned and caught my eye, he blushed again. His high color, his sweet confusion, his eyes . . . I am remembering all this. If I let myself, I’ll remember more.