No Matter How Much You Promise Read online

  Aberdeen Gabardine

  You’re the one I trust

  Don’t bring iron

  But bring wood

  So that it won’t rust.

  Aberdeen Gabardine

  I will marry thee

  Don’t bring glass

  But bring silver

  If your wife I’ll be.

  Aberdeen Gabardine

  Look out for my heart

  Don’t bring candles

  Bring a goose

  In a golden cart.

  And who was Aberdeen Gabardine? Maybe Aberdeen was a girl. It sounded like a girl’s name. Maybe she was like those women that liked each other. She had seen them in Tompkins Square Park kissing, and sometimes she’d seen others walking down the street with their arms around each other. The thought made her sad and she thought about her thing. Thinking about it usually removed all thought of romance from her head and she went back to repeating the words of her rhyme, enjoying the combination of their sounds and the taste of the doughnut, but thinking about her mama, Lurleen, who was feeling poorly, as she said, and had remained behind. Had she been there she would have been railing at Papa for aiding in the destruction of their teeth and their health by allowing them to eat sugar like that.

  So Fawn sat down and savored the doughnut and talked to her big sister Vidamía, who had become her confidante this past year, since Fawn was starting to ask questions about coming of age and it scared her because she had seen Cookie and her mother with their boobs and their hair and their cramps and she wanted no part of it and what was she supposed to do with that thing hanging there like Cliff’s, whom she had seen when he was making wee, wanting with all her might to tell Vidamía because she was sure her sister would understand but holding off since her mama had said it was best if no one knew and that soon the matter would be taken care of and she had to just be patient and everything would be all right, which she doubted because she was a freak like they had at freak shows, which she’d read about, belonging with twoheaded babies and six-legged pigs.

  “Why’s it gotta be like that?” she asked Vidamía, her head resting on her sister’s left shoulder as she sat on the amp. “It makes no sense why we gotta have boobs.”

  “They’re called primary sexual characteristics,” explained Vidamía pedantically, although the word “pedantic” wasn’t yet part of her vocabulary. “Primary sexual characteristics determine masculinity in boys and femininity in girls.”

  “They’re awful. Cookie says when you get them, boys want to touch you. Yuck!”

  “You don’t have to let them touch you.”

  Fawn was as smart as your proverbial whip and replied immediately that if you didn’t have to let them touch your boobs, then you had a choice and you could let them touch you if you wanted, and had Vidamía ever let a boy touch her? Vidamía shook her head and felt like a hypocrite because it had happened just the other night with Ricky over in Tompkins Square Park near the bandstand where the light had gone out on the lamppost. She felt herself flush hot, which Fawn didn’t notice from being so absorbed in herself.

  “Well, has anyone?” Fawn insisted.

  “Of course not.”

  “Has anyone tried?” she asked, licking the sugar from the doughnut off her fingers.

  Vidamía was into the lie now and said that plenty of boys had tried but that she always changed the subject and talked about something that was more interesting to them.

  Cookie had lost her virginity with some boy by the name of Mario Wong, she’d told Vidamía, describing the utter cuteness of this boy so that Vidamía could see him clearly. Vidamía learned subsequently that young Mario, sixteen years old and aceing every class at Stuyvesant High School—and heading for a perfect 1,600 SAT score—was the product of a Sino-Puerto Rican cultural exchange that took place down on Canal Street, around the corner from Mulberry or Mott, where San Juan and Hong Kong are separated by a diaphanous curtain of Italian pastries and espresso coffee; Cookie promising that Vidamía would meet him soon. “Girl, you have to put a lock on your impatience, mijita, cause Mr. Wong ain’t going nowhere, baby. He’s coming right back to his mama, if you get my meaning,” she said, pointing lasciviously at her chest, her eyes sparkling with the double entendre of the Spanish mamar, to suck.

  Vidamía and Fawn had finished speaking when a thin black man about sixty years of age and carrying an alto saxophone case, stopped in front of them, excused himself, and asked if they had seen Bill Farrell. Vidamía looked up and was at first startled but then began to explain that her father would return in a minute, when Cookie came up and asked the man who he was.

  “Alfred Butterworth, a friend,” the man said, talking with a rasp in his voice. “I saw him yesterday but wasn’t sure it was him. I came back to make sure. You his kid?”

  “Yeah, we all are,” Cookie said, fanning the area with her arm to include little Caitlin and Cliff as if they were there, which they were not since their papa had gone to find a toilet so they could relieve themselves.

  “You play?” she asked, letting him know she was a homegirl, even if she was white and he better not try anything funny, except his eyes had this little smile in them and that was usually something you could trust in people. If it wasn’t there, watch it, her mama had said.

  “I play a little bit,” he said, sweeping his eyes over the blond heads, and then to Vidamía, and wanting to ask if this dark-haired one was Billy’s kid, too, but not saying the words.

  “Me too,” Cookie said. “Tenor. Stick around and you can jam with us.”

  Butterworth laughed and nodded at this fey little girl who reminded him of Billy, except she was so cocky and sure of herself while Billy had always been so shy and respectful, and he recalled the time he’d brought him to the Five Spot, and Monk had been there that afternoon trying out the piano in preparation for a gig and Billy stood petrified in the dark by the bar and wouldn’t come forward to meet Monk until Butterworth dragged him over to the piano and introduced him by telling Monk that Billy was a pianist. When Monk looked up, this squeaky little voice came out of Billy and he said, “Nice meetin’ you, Mr. Monk,” and Thelonious sent his right hand way up to the high end of the piano and played the same squeaky little greeting, plin-pliny-plun-pliny-plun, and laughed and asked Billy if he’d like to sit down, sliding off the bench and Butterworth pushing him down, explaining to Monk that Billy’s daddy had been a cop and got shot up a few years back when he walked into a holdup up on Third Avenue in Spanish Harlem.

  “The kid takes lessons from Mae Wilkerson up in the Bronx.”

  “Mae from the colored women’s bands?” Monk asked.

  “Yeah, you know her,” Butterworth said. “Light-skinned heavyset woman.”

  And Monk said, “Sit down, son.” The voice was so imposing that there was no turning back. Billy sat down and looked up at Butterworth, and Butterworth thought the kid’d start crying so he said, “Just do ‘Midnight’ like you did at Mae’s house last week. Go on.” And the kid looked at Monk but Monk was looking down, waiting, listening, so Billy went into it, playing the intervals just like he heard them himself, not like Monk but not unlike him, and after a while Monk was humming deep in his chest and when Billy was finished, Monk asked them if they wanted a beer and Billy shook his head, wanting to explain that he was only fifteen years old, although he and his friends had gotten drunk pretty bad the previous St. Patrick’s Day.

  They’d sat down and talked for a while, mostly Pop Butterworth, because Thelonious didn’t say but a few words, and then Monk said he had to split but to come back that evening, which they did, and Billy sat there spellbound listening to Thelonious play “Straight No Chaser,” “Friday the Thirteenth,” “Ruby My Dear,” “Mysterioso,” and many other tunes, including “’Round Midnight,” in the middle of which, while Charlie Rouse was soloing, Monk looked at Billy and, comping with his left hand, touched, ever so subtly, his ear. Billy looked at Butterworth who explained that Monk wanted him to pay attention. He lis
tened as Monk punctuated Charlie Rouse’s solo so that Billy had a picture of a painter touching up a canvas. After a while, Charles Mingus came in with a big-breasted white woman and Butterworth introduced him to Mingus, but it wasn’t the same and Billy couldn’t wait for the next set to hear Monk play.

  Cookie, Vidamía, Fawn, and Butterworth had been jamming on “Jealous Love” with Butterworth singing like Louis Armstrong and pretty soon Cliff came back and picked up his trombone and began wailing away behind Butterworth, who stood listening, enraptured by this young boy who looked just like his father, and a crowd formed in a halfcircle around the band and dropped coins and bills into the bucket; and then, like they had been playing together forever, they went into “Blues in the Night,” the horns crying and the kids letting loose all the pain they didn’t yet know they could have; but Butterworth feeling the pain since he had lived it all, including loving Lady Day like he did and not being able to help her; enduring the pain and not saying anything but watching until the end and feeling helpless; always wanting to forget but always playing juke joints and recalling things in his life; especially meeting Buck Sanderson, Billy’s grandfather, when Butterworth was just fourteen down there in Memphis and the big white man with the wide smile asking him if he played that thing, meaning his clarinet, and Butterworth nodding but scared stiff because this was a white man talking to him and the white man was walking around in the colored section, down by Beale Street, telling him he was too young to be going into a juke joint but he was just curious to hear him play, going into Bramwell’s, where everyone greeted the white man like they liked him a whole lot and was friends for a long time. Buck Sanderson walked over to the piano and from the top of it got his banjo and settled himself on a stool, then Eightball Bramwell, his black bald head shining, sat down at the piano and said, “Go on, boy, if you plays that licorice stick, get with it!” and they’d played “Long Gone John from Bowling Green.”

  That’s when Billy showed up, his Farmer Jones hat pulled down on his forehead and his long blond hair hanging to his shoulders, his beard starting to get gray hairs so that when Butterworth saw him his heart filled with a mixture of emotions—love, pride, regret, pain, and anger. Without being at all aware of Butterworth’s presence, so far away did Billy’s mind at times go, he picked up his guitar and joined in while Cookie went into “Hear that lonesome whistle blowin’ ‘cross the trestle, whooee …”, Billy strumming pretty good on the Gibson and Butterworth for the first time seeing his three-finger claw hand running sideways across the strings and the sorrow of a thousand men carved into his eyes. Butterworth’s alto sax spoke so clearly that you could almost hear it crying “Sweet Jesus, what have they done to this boy! What have they done!”

  Butterworth hadn’t seen him in all these years, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t asked about him. No one had seen Billy; some couldn’t even remember who he was, and still others, embittered by their own failed lives, had accused Butterworth of chasing after the white man, not understanding that the boy could play and wherever he’d brought him people had praised him. Even Charles Mingus, who was as hard as they came and didn’t want to hear about white men and came out with that beautiful Fables of Faubus album, angrily attacking Governor Faubus of Arkansas and his racist policies, the music so progressive and fresh so that when you hear it now you think it’s been composed recently—even Charles had said the boy could play, for a white boy, which never made any sense to him since he’d heard black folks who could play classical music and receive awards and recognition, who composed scores for motion pictures and knew their instrument and talked about the music like they understood it, but when it came to actually playing didn’t have that certain thing that made you want to get up and move or even tap your foot. So that when the real musicians played, you knew there was something going on behind the playing which was personal and new. He’d seen all of them, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Diz, Monk, Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Paul Chambers, and Miles, and they all had it. Black or white, they all had that feeling. They could swing. The quality was either present or it wasn’t and you couldn’t fake it by talking shit.

  What a waste! He could still recall that Saturday afternoon in late fall when Billy had come up to his apartment on 145th Street and Riverside Drive while the business with Miles was pending; scared out of his mind and not knowing what he was going to do because he’d been drafted and he’d have to go, talking crazy about how the country needed him and his father would’ve expected it of him.

  “Billy, Billy,” he’d said. “Relax a minute and let’s think this out.”

  “I can’t, Pop,” Billy said, pulling out the draft board envelope. “I gotta do it. If my father was in my shoes that’s what he’d do,” he added, hitting the letter on the palm of his hand.

  “What about the music, son? You’re doing so good. Miles really wants you to play with him. Why, in a year or so you could be playing regular and earning a living, cutting your own records. There ain’t many like you, son. Even Monk saw it that time at the Five Spot. You could get a deferment, cause you’re the only one your mother has. Don’t you see that?”

  “I couldn’t do that, Pop. They need me and I gotta go.”

  “Why don’t you go back one more time and play with Miles, just to see what he says and then make up your mind?”

  “I wanna do that, Pop. I really dug playing with him. But it wouldn’t be fair, Pop. What am I gonna tell him? Sorry, Mr. Davis, I’ve been drafted. I better just go down and straighten things out with the army.”

  And then he walked out of the apartment and the next time Butterworth saw him was four months later just before Christmas. Billy had a crew cut and was wearing his Marine uniform.

  Butterworth, playing along with the band, watched Billy and his kids as they finished playing, the little girl, Fawn, coming in at the end, mostly snare and cymbal but showing definite potential, and Butterworth looking over at Billy, and Billy finally recognizing him and going pale and sick in his stomach but leaning the guitar against some McDonald’s advertisement stuck on the subway wall and coming over to him and standing in front of him and Butterworth doing the same, the two of them just standing there for the longest time until Butterworth finally took a couple of steps forward, reached out with his open arms and brought Billy against him. But really against his saxophone, so that to the children it seemed as if their father was a small boy and the thin, short black man was bigger and was taking care of him; and they held each other like that for a few minutes. Butterworth let go and held Billy at arm’s length.

  “How’s it going, son?” he said.

  And Billy, his eyes a little moist, was nodding and trying to say something. But no words would come out, and he just went on nodding until Butterworth asked him for his address because he wanted to stay in touch and Billy took out paper and pen and wrote it all out, including his phone number, his left hand writing and his claw hand holding the paper on his amp as he wrote. A few minutes later Butterworth had packed up his alto and was gone, and they were back to playing “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?” the strains of the music following Butterworth as he walked away toward the Seventh Avenue train and his trip back to Harlem, remembering how he’d begged Billy not to go into the army; told him it didn’t make any sense him going, and if he did he should tell them he was a musician and get on a band—they had things like that where he could use his talent to entertain other soldiers—but Billy’d gone ahead, joined the Marines of all things, never telling them he was a pianist. Buck Sanderson, Billy’s grandfather, told him that Billy was at Camp Geiger and that he was going to be a machine gunner, shaking his head, not wanting to utter the fear that sat in his chest like a dark nesting bird that would one day spread its wings and bring him bad news.

  Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey,

  Won’t you come home?

  She moans the whole day long.

  I’ll do the cookin’, darling,

  I�
�ll pay the rent …

  Bill Bailey won’t you please

  come home?

  Life was sure a harsh thing. Butterworth didn’t know anybody who had come out on the winning end. Certainly nobody in the music business—except a few. But for every one of them there were a dozen and a half like him, pushing a broom somewhere, tending someone’s building, flipping hamburgers on a grill, or, like him, running an elevator eight hours a day, up and down, up and down, locked up in a steel cage like a monkey in a uniform. Somehow white people seemed to come out of the experience all right and found themselves something else to do, but black folks just played the music and the next thing you knew they was being degraded somewhere. But that wasn’t fair cause Billy was white. And then he thought of poor Candy Donovan, crazy flipped out about Bird, then going off to Detroit somewhere and singing in cheap joints, hooking up with some badass nigger auto worker and having six or seven kids by two or three dudes, becoming a drunk and getting her head cracked open one night.

  He thought of Billy again, wanting to forget the past and look to tomorrow, to somehow hope that the boy could salvage something of his life, because he, Alfred Butterworth, sure as hell hadn’t.

  17. Slumming

  It is stated in certain writings that the human being is a microcosm of the universe, so that filtered through the contrivances of science and the fashionably opaque lens of popular culture we have come to understand that we are not, as assumed in the past, mere mortals, but grandiosely the stuff of stars. This confusing dictum, as perhaps decanted by Nova or some other sound PBS program, led Vidamía Farrell at the susceptible age of nine years, already genetically predisposed to inquiry, to ask her mother, Elsa Santiago López-Ferrer, how this could be, since some people were so ordinary. Her mother looked at her and realized for the first time that perhaps she had on her hands, in the person of her daughter, a bona fide inquiring mind, and although she felt little in the way of maternal stirrings, she decided she ought to cultivate her daughter’s considerable capacity for critical thinking, if not for the child’s sake, at least for the social value of having an intelligent offspring.