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Marchel Alverson Online

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The Prayer of Prospect

Blink twice and it would disappear. A shack of a place with eroding brick, permanently stained windows and a rapidly decaying roof. The Prospect Lounge lay in the center of destitution on the dividing line that, from Troost Avenue to 13^th Street, formed a city-planned maze that, on most nights, made even the best sinners beg for mercy.

In this place, where disparity reigned supreme, the Prospect Lounge was considered a safe haven, an oddity of sorts. The only sibilance of life inside the building was a neon sign about 12 feet above the roof that had once glowed.

As small as it was, the Prospect Lounge added a type of unearthed beauty to midtown, with its perennials that sprouted every spring and stayed green throughout the year, and its immaculate entryway.

Edda was the soul of this place. What kept people coming was the way she could look at a person and just "know." People could take one look into her charcoal-colored eyes and want to tell her all about themselves. There were no pressures at the lounge. No false airs. No disrespect. Here, a person could just be. And, if they could be in such a place and drink non-watered down drinks, eat an endless supply of stale pretzels and listen to Aretha Franklin or Bobby Womack on the only dusty record player left in the city, well then, it was even better. The people of Prospect Avenue loved Edda and her lounge.

But Edda, who was about as old as the building itself, was tired. While her patrons left her feeling better after spilling all their troubles and listening to her advice, they took pieces of her soul along with them. Unknowingly, they had trampled her spirit.

On this night, this last night, she was closing the lounge for good. Edda knew it was long time coming. She should have closed it long ago. Perhaps, after her late husband, who had just recovered from a stroke, was gunned down during a botched robbery attempt. Or, maybe after the third robbery that left her with nothing, not even the first dollar she had earned. All they had left behind was the empty picture frame that once hung high above the bar.

On this last night at the lounge, Edda opened the doors and breathed in the cool night air as she stared at the Second Metropolitan Church across the way. She saw the main light was on in the vestibule, so she knew that Reverend Stokes was working late again.

Like her, he lived and worked where he felt the most secure. Edda and Reverend Stokes has a classic love-hate relationship. He made it clear that he hated everything the lounge stood for – drinking, fighting, gambling, promiscuity and that damn secular music. Yet, he adored the Jamesons – the way Edda sang in the choir every Sunday, the many ministries she volunteered for, and the way the family faithfully tithed. In fact, it was his church, that had given their son, Damon, a partial scholarship to attend college. Edda had a quiet respect for Reverend Stokes.

Their strange relationship kept the church and the lounge in a peaceful existence on the same block, right next to the liquor store, the pawnshop and a boarded up grocery store.

No sooner had Edda closed the door on her site seeing when her regulars began bursting in, bringing with them new patrons. To the new ones, to walk in on a spread of collard greens, ham hocks, cornbread, snap peas and peach cobbler was nothing out of the ordinary. But, for the regulars, they might as well have been called to the Last Supper.

Edda’s reaction to their sadness garnered some mixed reviews. It was the first time they’d seen her smile. Not a full smile that showed her large teeth, but just enough to make out a slight curvature of the lips.

"Mama...what are you doing?" Damon, her eldest, burst from the back room where he had been holed up for most of the night "crunching the numbers." "We’re going to go broke with all this food you put out. Oh my God...you’re not charging for it either! Have you lost your mind?" His round jaws suddenly throbbed.

"Hush, boy," Edda said. "I’ve been running this place long before you were even a thought in my head, so don’t start thinking you can tell me what to do now."

"All I’m saying Mama, is that I’ve been going through your books, and you’re practically broke as it is. I don’t think I’ll even get much from the sale of the tables and stools and stuff...and I don’t think anyone is actually going to buy this place. Mama, why didn’t you ever call me before now? I could have helped you," he said.

"Look here boy...just because you got a fancy accounting degree from that fancy school don’t mean you can save me from scraping bottom. I’ll be fine. I’ve got the rest of you’re Daddy’s insurance money and my little nest egg." She wiped the few tables that were left down as she spoke. "I’ll be fine."

While Edda had prayed that her son would have a better life than her own, she never thought she would see the day when his prosperity would overshadow the bound that was family.

"Fine. FINE!" Damon grabbed hold of the bar with his meaty hands in an effort to try and compose himself.

He noticed her slight smile. At times, he really did think his mother was losing it. This being one of them. Damon couldn’t make her understand that this lounge had been sopping her dry for years. He couldn’t see why she wasted so much time trying to clean up a dump, or why she continued to live in this neighborhood. The same one he’d grown up in.

Damon hated everything about the lounge, everybody associated with the place, and he blamed it for every wrong his family had ever endured. Most of all, Damon hated the lounge because Edda seemed to love it more than she did him. Although far from reality, he couldn’t squelch his hatred. It was always there in the pit of his stomach threaten to boil over the top.

Edda said, " Come get you some food before they eat it all up. You need to cheer up. You always wanted me to close this place down, now you’ve got what you wanted."

His mother’s voice jarred his nerves. "Lucky me," he quipped as he hurriedly made a plate of food and stomped over to the back room. He slammed the door behind him. But the sound might as well have been a pin drop compared to the music blaring from throughout the lounge.

"You all right, Ms. Edda?" She turned to Crump, her doorman, and nodded. She studied the small crowd that began to form on the makeshift dance floor adorned with a few strings of holiday lights.

For about as long as the Prospect Lounge had been open, there had been Crump. He was a tall heavyset man with a light brown complexion and stern eyes. Edda didn’t know Crump’s real name. He didn’t seem willing to give it out. But she knew she had his loyalty. That was all that mattered.

Why Crump chose to stick around for so long she didn’t know either. He’d come to her when he was barely legal, eager to find work, food and a place to lay his head. Back then, Crump looked like he was running from trouble straight into a heap of mess. So, she had taken him in as her own. He was the one who had stepped in to help her, to protect her, after she’d lost her husband. Each time something bad had happened at the lounge, Crump was away. He had never forgiven himself for that.

Edda asked, "What are you gonna’ do with yourself now that this place is gone?"

"I got me a plan working," he answered. "But, you best believe I’ll still be at your house every Sunday for some of that sweet potato pie."

"Look like you done had too many of them pies already," Edda laughed. A rarity, and only around Crump.

Edda nearly dropped the draft mug she held as Reverend Stokes came inside for the first time. A petite woman and a sandy-haired man followed behind.

Damon, who must have sniffed the excitement brewing, came outside to take in the scene.

"Edda, these people are from the newspaper. They want to do a story about you," he said, leaning his barely five-foot frame against the bar. He seemed to sense what he was touching and quickly backed away. "They got lost on the way here and stopped to ask me for directions."

"What?" Edda, at a loss for words, leaned against the reverend’s outstretched arm for support.

"Hi, Ms. Jameson. My name is Kristi Harris. I’ve been trying to contact you for some time now. I would like to do a story on you and the closing of the Prospect Lounge...how you’ve single handily impacted this community." The reporter’s voice had a slow drawl to it, like time just waited for her to speak.

"I haven’t impacted nothing," Edda said.

The frail reporter smiled. She said, "I’ve been getting a lot of calls about you and this place. What it meant to the people here. What you meant. Apparently, you’ve helped a lot of folks."

"Like us, Edda, when you came through with the new choir robes," said one of Edda’s praise team members.

One by one, the small crowd around her began to recount the number of times she had helped them. Edda couldn’t believe what was happening. She sat and talked with the reporter and had her picture taken with Damon, Crump and Reverend Stokes. The reporter stayed afterwards to feast on some of Edda’s down-home cooking.

Edda didn’t realize how much time had passed until Crump tapped her lightly on the shoulder. She couldn’t look up at him. "Edda..."

"I know...I know. It’s...time." She paused. Counted the thumping of her heart. "Reverend Stokes, as long as you’re here...let’s do this right."

The reverend sighed. Clasped his hands together. "Let us bow our heads..."

A calm hush fell over the room as the crowd put down their liquor, closed their eyes, and hung their heads down. When the prayer ended, Edda bid farewell to everyone, just has she had done most nights for nearly 20 years.

Crump checked the register and gathered the drink mixers, tongs and glasses to take to the dishwasher in the back. Edda wrapped up the lemons, limes and cherries. The she dumped the ice. Then she realized that she needn’t had bothered.

She grabbed Crump’s hand. She said, "No...not tonight. It’s time to go now."

Damon came from the back room. She stared at her son. She stared real hard at him.

"Mama, if you’re ready, I’ll walk you home."

"Okay, son."

Edda walked behind bar. Took down the empty dollar frame and the lone picture of her late husband. She said goodbye to Crump and bolted the door shut. Listened to it click for the last time. Then she laughed. A loud laugh that echoed throughout the cold night air.

Tonight, for the first time, she was taking her soul back. She had thought she had wasted her life in this place. She had thought that this place had died a long time ago. Now, she saw the lounge as a living testimony to the soul of sinners. In this way, her own way, she had made her mark. She had poured more than liquid dreams. She had poured out her heart.

The Bedroom Window

I stand here, my manicured hands elbow deep in tepid sink water, laughing at the hypocrisy of my predicament. There are no more dishes to wash. Haven’t been for almost an hour. Yet, here I am, clutching a lukewarm dishcloth tight to my chest in anguish because I am usually the woman who laments to anyone within earshot about this country’s fixation with the private lives of others – what transpires in their bedrooms.

Was Angelina with Brad before his divorce from Jen? Is Star’s husband a homosexual? Why did Brit really leave Kevin?

Who the hell cares? Apparently, the millions of innocent victims who fall prey to the these types of tabloid headlines as they innocently wait in the check-out lines. The magazines that frequently force me, and many others, to succumb to the intricate details of such celebrities, just before the cashier – usually a teenage girl – eyes me annoyingly, pops her gum one last time, and asks me if I want paper or plastic.

Paper or plastic? Don’t the pseudo reporters and editors realize that there are more important things in this world – hunger, genocide, war – than who slept with whom? Sometimes, I feel like the only woman in the world who still values privacy. Decency.

But, the couple across the courtyard from my apartment. They never close their curtains. The ones to their bedroom. So I watch them.

It all began quite innocently enough. I was in my apartment. Had just finished my twelve-hour rotation in the maternity ward, and was about to fix myself a mug of chai tea, when I happened to glance outside my window. The small window, directly above my kitchen sink. The faucet was filling my teapot. My hands were soaking wet. Water collected, overflowed from the teapot, then washed down the drain – just like my thoughts.

Through the distance, I could see him touch her in the light. The outline of their perfectly in-tune bodies making a silhouette through the drabness of my sepia-colored lace curtains. Their nakedness intertwined in a type of frenzied loved dance.

Now, I watch them every day.

I am fascinated by their comings and goings. Nights, I find myself waiting at the window for the tell-tale lights to illuminate from their bedroom. I reach for the switch just above the garbage disposal. Turn the room pitch black so they can’t see me. Turn away from my own reflection in the glass. I stare. Watch the steam rise from the hot water and let my imagination wonder what he does to her when the lights go out. Then, the tea kettle calls out to me, reminds me that I am all alone. But I don’t dare move.

On cold mornings, I make circles in the window with the sleeve of my favorite white terry cloth robe, just large enough for me to catch a glimpse. I will blow my hot morning breath onto the glass to rid it of any condensation – anything that will distort my view.

I am obsessed. I cannot stop myself from going toward the window. I often find myself making excuses. Excuses that lead me into the path of the window. Find myself disappointed to notice that they are not there, so I can no longer see them.

Each day, they awake at precisely six o’clock. They are dressed and showered by six forty-five. I watch as he carries his shoes over to the side of the bed and places his feet into them stubbornly. Left foot, then right. I imagine the way his freshly showered body glistens. How the splash of his aftershave on each cheek smells.

Then I watch her. Notice how she smiles up at him when she greets him each morning. Watch the motions of her shapely curves. Her breasts. Her thighs. Her close-cropped mahogany hair – the color of sun-baked leaves in the fall.

On two separate occasions, I have even went so far as to run after her after I see her kiss him goodbye. My long hair trails behind my back trying to catch up to me. I need to see this woman up close. I catch her just as she is heading for the elevators. I say, "hello" quite casually, the way neighbors sometimes do in passing. She smiles at me. Greets me with a ring of pleasantry in her voice. I come face-to-face with her beauty. I am caught in her essence. Her stylishness. In her sweet perfume.

As she leaves, I wonder if she can tell by looking at me that I know about all the intimate details of her life? The comings and goings? The heated love-making and the equally heated arguments. The things I see through her bedroom window? The one that they never close.

Then, I wonder if she knows about me, the thirty-something single woman who lives across the way? Knows who I am? Knows that as soon as she leaves from the building, I am no longer looking through her bedroom window? I am in her bedroom. I become the other woman one who stares from the bedroom window into my own kitchen.

I wonder if she cares that I lay down on her polyester fabricated silk sheets and nuzzle my nose deep into her pillow to hide my moans? If she knows that I love her husband? Make love to her husband when she is not there? Would she be so cordial to me then? If she realized that, I too, share her same preference for antiseptic mouthwash and lavender scented bath salts.

How I arrived here – dishpan hands and all – is not important. What I see beyond the courtyard into apartment 213 is all that matters. Rain or shine. I will wait here. I will watch them. Wonder if today will finally be the day that she notices the woman staring at her from across the way through her open window?

I know that if she were in my shoes, she would do the same. She would find herself standing right where I am now – staring outside the kitchen window and wondering what he does to her when the lights go out.

The She Said ‘Nijjer’

This wasn’t supposed to happen – not in my home. After all, hadn’t I done everything I could to keep this nemesis from darkening my doorstep.

Yet, one evening, the enemy sat down on my couch like an uninvited house guest, and I had no idea how I was going to get it to leave.

Prejudice had made barged in. Made its way inside.

It had knocked on the door quite innocently enough. The family, sitting down together, engaged in our after-dinner ritual of watching television. My then four-year-old daughter at my feet. Me oiling and braiding her long, thick black hair. She was playing with her dolls. My toddler son sitting beside us.

We were laughing at some commercial or another when my daughter said, "Look, Mama, this one’s the nijjer doll." So excited she was to demonstrate this as she raised the brown-skinned doll high into the air.

I stopped mid-braid.

"What did you just say?" I asked, sure that I had heard her wrong.

"The nijjer doll. The nijjer doll," she repeated.

For a moment, it was as if the clock hanging overhead had stopped. The television had faded to mute. I was beyond speechless. I stared at the dolls in my daughter’s miniature hands. One doll on the right. Blond. Blue-eyed. The other doll on the left. Black hair. Brown-skinned. Other than that, they were identical. They wore the same painted-on blue jeans, pink shirt and earth-toned shoes. They were the same, even down to the small pink ribbon in their heads.

"Which one is the nijjer doll, sweetie," I asked? "Show Mama which one it is."

She held up the doll in her left hand. I cursed the demons – the ignorance – of the outside world that had suddenly crushed my daughter’s innocent soul. I was forced to face the fact that I could no longer shield her from the people who would consider her "less than," or "beneath them."

"Where did you learn that word," I asked?

At the sound of the urgency in my voice, she dropped the dolls and began to cry. They fell in two different directions. Silently, I cursed the floor they fell on.

Up until this point, I thought I had done everything right. From the day she was born, I’d made sure to expose her to all different types of cultures. How could she not be exposed? After all, she had both white and black grandmothers, a black father, a biracial mother, and just about every nationality within her own family. We were our own Rainbow Coalition.

Didn’t I go purposely out of my way to buy her more brown dolls than white? I constantly purchased books, movies, even coloring books with characters that looked the way she did. I remembered a time when I wouldn’t even buy her a child’s Bible because all of the Biblical characters looked white. And, if I couldn’t find the diversity in these avenues, then animals were always a safe bet.

My purpose wasn’t to try and exclude any one race or culture. Instead, I wanted to help my daughter love and appreciate who she was. Who God made her to be. I wanted her to have the self-esteem of a queen. I didn’t want her to have to grow up like I did – believing that I was ugly because I didn’t look like the girls on the magazine covers. I wanted her to look at herself in the mirror and feel beautiful until the day she died.

But the enemy had come in and attempted to shatter all of my hopes.

Oh, it didn’t surprise me to learn that prejudice had reared its ugly head in her direction. I just thought it would happen later rather than sooner. I didn’t think it would happen to her at age four.

So I asked her, again, "Where did you hear that word?"

"Tell me," I said. "You’re not in anybody’s trouble. You did nothing wrong. TELL ME!"

"I...I heard it in s-school," she said.

"Okay then. Let’s finish your hair."

I forced a smile to appear on my face, and my daughter picked up her dolls and began playing again.

The next morning, I calmly entered the preschool and walked my daughter to her classroom. Just like any other day. On this day, though, I walked into the director’s office, sat down at the chair adjacent to her desk, took out a brown paper bag and poured the contents atop her desk. The director looked down. Mystified.

On her desk were the two little dolls.

"Do you know what my daughter said last night while she playing with these dolls," I asked?

Normally, a shy person, I had the strength of ten angels behind me. Motherhood had changed me. Seeing my daughter being torn down, and not built up, had changed me.

"No, what?" Question for question. Tit for tat.

"She said this one was the nijjer doll. This. One." I specifically pointed to the brown-skinned doll. I wanted to make sure she knew which one I was referring to. I wanted her to know what it felt like to have a child come home and say those words.

"Now, I can’t control what the other children are exposed to in their homes. I can’t control what they learn, or what they hear here. But, I can control what goes on under my roof, and this...this...will not be one of them."

"I can assure you that we practice a Christian-based curriculum that preaches love and acceptance, and we do not tolerate this type of behavior. I had no idea that this was going on," the director said.

"I’m not paying for my daughter to learn degrading words. If it happens again, I’ll be forced to pull her from this school," I said, my every word hard. Crystal clear.

"We’ll do everything we can," she said.

We stood. Shook hands. But I didn’t stop there. I went to the secretary who greeted us warmly every morning and evening from her chair at the front desk. I repeated the story. Showed her the dolls. I then went to my daughter’s teacher. Told the story a third time.

Did I feel better afterwards? Yes. Did I feel validated? No. When prejudice hits home, nothing will ever be the same again. Once the demons of ignorance have invited themselves in, sat down at the dinner table, they never leave. You stand a better chance of getting rid of bad wallpaper.

But still I press on – determined that my children will grow up to feel valued, loved and well-rounded. And, maybe one day, they’ll forget the day they ever heard the word. "Nijjer."

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