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BOOKS BY MELVIN DIXON

BOOKS BY MELVIN DIXON

Vanishing Rooms (1991)

The Collected Poems of Ljopold Sidar Senghor
(TRANSLATION, 1991)

Trouble the Water (1989)

Ride Out the Wilderness:
Geography and Identity in Afro-American Literature (1987)

Change of Territory (1983)

Dedication

for Richard

always

Epigraph

Where’s taunted Christopher, sad queen of night?
And Ray, who cursing crossed the color line?
Where’s gentle Brother Davis? Where’s dopefiend Mel?
Let vanished rooms, let dead streets tell.

—ROBERT HAYDEN

PART ONE

PART ONE

Jesse

Jesse

Metro wasn’t his real name, but I called him that. It was fall of 1975. He led me by the arm out of the dark, rotting warehouse and to the pier fronting West Street. The sharp, fresh air cut through the smell of mildew stuffing my nose. The shock of the bright October sun made me blink so hard I missed a step and stumbled against him. He reached to block my fall, lifting my fingers to his nose. I squeezed his shoulders, held tight for a moment. We wobbled like two dancing drunks, vying for balance. His hands were shaking with a chill. The salt flavor of his skin left my mouth and my lips dried. I could stand and breathe again.

The lot around the pier and the warehouse looked like a deserted playground. Behind me I heard footsteps and creaking floorboards where we had been. We walked on ahead where the Hudson River lapped at soggy wooden piles. The water gurgled and sloshed with delight and the loose, stiff wood swayed in the dim flow. One post cracked free, bobbed in the sucking current, and floated away limp. I brushed off my jeans, more dusty now than blue. Wood splinters fell out of the seams. I looked at Metro to see if he noticed. His eyes were red and puffy. Maybe mine were too. His jeans were torn at the knees and just as dusty. Maybe his knees were scraped, I couldn’t tell. He kept shivering, but I felt warm in the wide blade of sunlight. I squinted to see him clearer. My face wrinkled to a pout.

“Are you mad?” he asked me, brushing tangled brown hair from his face. His hand pulled out splinters. “Are you mad because I made you come here?”

“You didn’t make me come,” I said. “I came because I wanted to.”

Metro touched my denim jacket and let go. He shook his head. “Then why are you looking like that?” he asked, his eyes holding mine.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re relieved or something.”

“What’s gotten into you?” I said. He stepped back from me. I didn’t mean to sound so annoyed. His skin had never looked so white.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t want to meet here again, Metro. Promise me we don’t have to meet here.”

“Why should I promise? You call me Metro, don’t you?”

“I’m scared, that’s all.” I wanted to touch him again, hold him close this time.

“You didn’t say that a few hours ago.”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

I held out my hand, reached for him, changed my mind, and searched my pockets instead. I found my watch. It was three forty-five. Damn, I was late for dance class. Today was the day for improvisations, a good chance to make an impression before auditions next month. I couldn’t miss a class. Metro started to say something, but I headed away from the warehouse to catch a crosstown cab. He followed after me, his keys jangling from a leather loop on his belt. “Wait,” he said.

I couldn’t wait. One cab zoomed by on radio call. Another stopped.

“Wait,” said Metro.

“I’m late already, man, what is it?”

“Never mind. I just thought you were angry, that’s all.”

“I’m not angry.” I got in the cab and lowered the window.

Metro had a wild look in his eyes. His chin held hard and straight. His thin lips opened and closed, but he said nothing more. He was taller than I but his shoulders slumped, and he looked weak. He didn’t raise his shoulders.

“I’m glad I came, Metro.”

“You didn’t like it, did you?”

I smiled. And he smiled, hesitantly at first. I knew why I was there.

He stepped back from the cab. I said, “See you later, baby. I love you,” and the cab lurched forward. The driver stared at me through the rearview mirror.

I’d be gone only a few hours. Metro would be home when I got back. Yet I missed him. My stomach fluttered. Maybe it was that empty, searching look in his eyes, or his suddenly pale skin against my oily brown hands. I missed him and searched the rear window. Metro was standing in the middle of West 12th Street, oblivious to the traffic veering around him. He scared me. I wanted the cab to turn around and pick him up, but it was too late. Why was I in such a rush? But I’m always rushing, rushing to dance class, rushing home, rushing to the mailbox, rushing just to be a quick step ahead of myself.

In no time I reached the studio. At my locker, I changed into yesterday’s tights, which had aired out but should have been cleaned. Splinters fell out of my clothes, from the armpits of my shirt and the seat of my pants. I must have smelled of wood and low tide. Other dancers were warming up with stretches on the floor. I wasn’t too late after all. Maybe I could sweat off the stink of the warehouse, dance with my feet on firm ground, not on creaking floorboards or with anonymous shadows lurking behind crumbling walls. Maybe the aftertaste of sweat, splinters, and Metro’s tangled brown hair would go away. The other dancers wouldn’t suspect a thing, I hoped, prayed. No one would know where I had been.

I stretched onto the floor for a few warm-ups, then stood with my stomach held in tight. My thighs eased open in demi-plié. Next, grand plié. I breathed deeply, calmly, and pulled myself up. On relevé I felt as tall as Metro, my hands as broad as his.

Anna Louise, the dance captain, called us into formation for single-file walks with our knees turned out, chests high. Next we lined up two by two. I found myself opposite another man, and we had to hold hands while doing triplet steps across the floor. For the next round I was with a girl I hadn’t seen before in class, and another black dancer at that. She was shorter than I by a good foot, dark-complexioned with broad hips and close-cropped, boyish hair. But her legs were long, and she was some match for me in the quick, crisp steps we had to execute:

One-two-three  One-two-three
Up-two-three  Down-two-three

Before I had a chance to say hello we were across the floor again with a leap-two-three, leap-two-three. Waltz step, then turns. Between breaths I asked her name. “Ruella,” she said heavily. “Ruella McPhee.”

I reached for her hand and caught her wrist. “I’m Jesse Durand.”

And we were back across the floor. Turns, leaps, waltz steps, and more stretches from head to toe.

Improvisation came next. “Just listen to this song for now, then let the music move you,” said Anna Louise, her hands circling in the air. She held her hips and added, “At first I thought this song was so simple, but then the words and music started to make such terrible sense that I was taken with it completely. Now you try.” She gave each pair of dancers a number.

We were number three.

The song played a second time. It was then that I recognized Nina Simone’s voice crooning from the single phonograph speaker as if it needed more room, was aching for it. Her voice bounced upon the empty walls of the studio. The words were those of Waring Cuney, I later found out, from a poem that still plays in my mind:

She does not know
Her beauty
She thinks her brown body
Has no glory.

If she could dance
Naked
Under palm trees
And see her image in the river
She would know.

I looked at Ruella and smiled. My knees were already moving with what I wanted to say. Ruella was tapping her feet. The song spoke to her too.

But there are no palm trees
On the street
And dish water gives back no images.

I thought of our house back in Hartford and my mother Jessica, who named me. She made me and my older brother Charlie wash dishes on alternate nights. We’d still fight over whose turn it was. My father made us shovel snow, take out the garbage in the cold, wash the car, scrub the kitchen floor, rake leaves into a pile, but we’d jump in it and have to rake them up again. I didn’t mind the kitchen work, but I hated the outside chores. “Work builds character,” my father always said. But he stopped preaching that line when he noticed my preference for baking cakes and polishing silverware.

As the song ended plaintively, Simone’s voice lifted high in arabesque, her throaty tones like a bridge to cross.

When our turn came, Ruella and I held each other at arm’s length and circled slowly, measuring our steps and each other. Our heads leaned in and out from the center between us. Our bodies came close. We were drawn into the music and the pain in Simone’s voice. Our bodies were swaying, singing. I broke the circle of our arms, held Ruella in slight elevation, then eased her down. I spun away and halted in demi-plié. She leaped in small quick steps, then faced me. I lifted her straight up, felt myself lifting, too. I brought her down slowly, carefully, my hands broad about her waist. We stood side by side and bent legs, arms, and thighs into a heap upon the floor. Her head eased into my arms; our faces touched, hair caressed. We were almost one head. We broke free and ran from each other like frightened children. I curled into a ball and shot up in arabesque. Ruella leaped high, then stood stock still. Our hands reached out, held on, turned with open palms to the other dancers watching us. Our waists swayed, curled, stretched like whispers. Our bodies had voices of their own, and they hushed into quiet. We sank into a pile, rose up close together. Our tights made our thighs one black pillar, and our Afros became one huge head. We inched into separate positions, our hands and eyes holding onto one another. The song ended with our standing back to back like a Janus mask, facing both sides of the room at once; one looking up and ahead, the other up and behind. Quickly, on the beat, we changed sides for the last wailing chord, then held firm as two sides of one body, one voice, both of us dancing from whatever we made visible on the floor.

The class erupted into applause. Anna Louise came forward with her hands tapping out a beat in the air. “You’ll have to develop that into a polished piece,” she said, “and present it to us again. What do you say, class?”

The applause grew louder, filling us. I smiled at Ruella who was grinning with such beautiful teeth. She smiled at me distantly, then left the floor. When class finished for the day, I waited at the dressing room until Ruella changed into street clothes. We walked together to the subway.

“I felt something in that dance,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

She looked at me without a word. Then she said, “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Dance,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Ruella. “I’ve never been that close to a guy without feeling he wants something. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.” Suddenly conscious of how I looked, I brushed off my jeans, pulled my stomach in.

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Ruella looked at me hard, her eyes scratching at something. Sunlight glistened in her short hair. My scalp itched with splinters I couldn’t wait to scratch out. “It was strange, but beautiful,” she said. “Real beautiful.”

I started giggling for no reason at all.

“Look,” she said. “Forget what I said just then. I don’t know you, really. You’re charming.”

“No, I’m not. Who wants to be charming, anyway?”

“Well, graceful, then. You move gracefully.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you auditioning for the company, too?”

“I hope so,” I said.

Below us a subway train screeched to a halt. Ruella looked worried. Her mouth grew tight. “Don’t make me miss my train, now.”

“I won’t.”

“I want to be home before it gets too dark.”

“Let’s get together again. To work on that dance,” I said.

“I don’t know, really. It was great, but I’m not sure I can get that high again. That’s why I don’t like improvs, not really. It’s like, well, meeting someone, and after the rush of excitement, it’s gone.”

“What about the beginning of a friendship?” I asked, watching her.

She smiled, then tried to hide it.

“We can work on the dance, at least.”

“Just the dance, Jesse?” Her eyes still searching. “I’ve got to get going.”

“See you again? In class, I mean.”

“Sure.”

“How far are you going?”

“To the West Side. Eighty-fourth Street.” Ruella bounded down the stairs. Then she was gone.

I wanted to dance again and to keep on dancing. The song and the improvisation came back to my mind, moving my feet as I walked home up 8th Street. My stomach was still contracted and made my steps light. I sang the song over to myself, trying to imitate Simone’s raspy voice, but nothing but my own flat drawl came through. I thought of Ruella, then remembered Metro waiting for me at home. I changed more than the pronouns.

He does not know his beauty
He thinks his pale body
Has no glory
If he keeps dancing naked
On the pier…

No, that’s not it:

There are no palm trees
On the pier…

I must have laughed out loud because people started moving away from me on the sidewalk. Some went into the street. I kept singing and smiling. I’d tell Metro about the dance, about Ruella. In that brief moment she seemed to be a place to come to, a pier without splinters, a cozy room, not a warehouse.

I thought of Metro’s thighs warm against mine, how close our faces held in making love, how wiry were his hands. But how lasting were those images? I walked faster. Suddenly, my toes were burning.

I reached the apartment, but he wasn’t there. I waited for him through the early evening. I scrambled some eggs for dinner and read GQ twice. I waited for him through the night. I waited and waited. The more I waited the stronger was my desire for him. I wanted his hands on me. My legs still ached from dance, and when they relaxed I tried to sleep.

I wanted his hands on me. I didn’t mind the cracked, chewed skin, the broken fingernails with flecks of dirt along the ridge. I wanted those hands on me, the blunt knuckles, the wrinkled skin, the bony joints, the tiny hair sprouts curling out. I wanted his hands on me. And wherever those hands led, I’d follow. I’d ride the tracks of his feet and the rough guardrails of those hands. Five fingers and five more. I wanted the electricity of his touch, his hands on me. How many times did I tell him, “Just touch me. Dance your fingers on my chest, my thighs. Press my flesh. Take off my clothes real slow.” But when he touched me, my excitement dwindled into fear. His hands fluttered, suddenly unsure of themselves, of where they would land and do their marvelous work. I bent low and let his fingers drum on my belly. Then calmly they stroked where my secret skin was softest. He lifted away his hands and hid them. His lips found the tender places left aching by his touch. And when my hands kneaded him in turn—everywhere—nothing afterwards felt the same.

Then morning. An alarm shooting through me like the song. A knock on the door. Police.

They asked if Metro lived there with me and I said yes. They looked as if they expected me to be white or have something to hide. They told me to come with them downtown.

Metro lay in the city morgue. He had been stabbed eight times.

I couldn’t look at him long. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I grabbed for something to hold on to. The room whirled red, then black. The next thing I knew I was being lifted from the floor. When I could hold steady, they wanted to know his real name. My mouth was too dry to speak. Finally, in a voice hardly my own, I said, “Jon-Michael Barthé.” His name didn’t sound right at all. They probably thought I was lying.

Later they wanted my name. I said, “Jesse.”

“Jesse what?”

“Jesse Durand.”

“Ain’t that a woman’s name?” asked an officer behind a desk.

“Sometimes,” I said.

They made me sign some papers. Then they let me go back home.

Once inside the apartment, I double-locked the door. I went to the window and spent hours looking up and down the street. Night came and swallowed up everything alive. Nothing moved, not even the subway below. I was alone. The rooms stirred empty. The emptiness gave off a chill. My eyes wouldn’t cry and wouldn’t close. I wanted to scream, but I had no air. I held myself in. I couldn’t stop trembling.

God, what had happened? Just yesterday we were standing together at the pier, marveling at the polluted Hudson. Then I had to get to class, dance class. I thought I was late. There was the girl I had danced with. Then the hours and hours I waited for Metro to come home. Suddenly voices filled the outer hallway. Rushing footsteps. Laughter. Banging on doors somewhere. My hands shook again and my stomach tied itself in knots. Where could I hide? But the voices went past my door and up to the last floor of the building. I was sweating. I had to talk to someone. Anyone. I called my parents long-distance but there was no answer. I called again and the line was busy. But what could I tell them? College buddy, roommate, lover dead? Not a chance. Then I fumbled through the telephone directory, found her name, number, and I dialed.

“Ruella, this is Jesse. From dance class, remember? We met yesterday. We danced. Remember?”

“Yes, yes, Jesse. But how did you get my number?” I tried to say something but couldn’t. “Jesse? You still there?”

“Listen, something terrible has happened. Metro, my friend. He’s been stabbed. He’s dead.” I couldn’t say anything more and she didn’t say any more. My breath caught in the phone. “I can’t stay here tonight,” I said. “Not alone.”

“You come right over, honey,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of room.”

I took only what I’d need for the night. Once there, I looked at her and she looked at me for a long time before I turned away and searched her windows. She didn’t ask any questions. I wanted to talk, to tell her everything. She said there was no rush. I wanted to say that boys named after their mothers are different, that it wasn’t for the money that they stabbed Metro; he had all his money on him when his body was found. It was for something else. When I tried to talk my lips started moving faster than the sounds, and I just cried, cried, cried.

Before the morgue’s cold darkness had sucked me in, I had seen the gashes like tracks all over Metro’s belly and chest. His open eyes were questions I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t say a word. The officer pulled the sheet all the way back and turned the body over where his ass had been slashed raw. I knew why he had been killed. I tried to scream but had no wind. I needed air. That’s when I must have hit the floor. I could still see those gashes. They opened everywhere, grooves of flesh and blood, lips slobbering with kisses.

Ruella put her arms around me. My stomach heaved. I bolted for the toilet and vomited until there was nothing left of the bathroom or me. I woke up in her bed. From then on I called her Rooms.

After that first night she said I could stay longer if I needed to. I told her that guys like me are different.

“Then why did you call me?” she asked.

“Because you were there.”

“But why me, Jesse?”

“We danced, that’s all.”

The second night Rooms touched me by accident. I didn’t move. The chilly, October night filled the bed space between us. Then her hand crept to mine and held it, caressing and easing out the chill. Slowly, I relaxed but couldn’t help remembering the men who had first made me warm. Metro’s name came up raw on my tongue. It needed air, more air. “Metro,” I said aloud. I kept still.

“Jesse? You all right?”

Rooms drew closer to me. We held each other tight against the dark.

“Jesse? You all right?” Her voice, hovering in the chill.

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