Memphis: A Novel(30)

During the crash of ’29, Stanley’s deli did not go bankrupt. This simple financial fact infuriated white Memphis. They could not understand that smart planning and the sheer fact that humans will always need bread were the reasons Stanley’s did not have to shutter. It did not matter; the Klan shuttered it for him. Set fire to the building one night. The next day, all of Douglass, thousands of Black hands, came out to help Stanley rebuild, brick by brick. Even Hazel, just eight years old then, had swept ash from the foundation.

So, when Stanley closed up shop on Friday nights for his Sabbath, the neighborhood would fry catfish in their front yards instead. And when Stanley refused to sell pork, the neighborhood did not understand his reasoning, but they did not argue with it. They made the slightly farther walk to another butcher, on Chelsea, for their pigs’ feet, hocks, and salt pork without complaint.

“Ah, the quiet rose is here,” Stanley said when Hazel pushed open the door of the deli. He stood, tall and slight, in a bloodstained apron behind the glass display case showcasing the chicken gizzards he had just butchered.

Hazel heard music as she reached into her pocket to pull out her grocery list. Memphis Minnie’s voice poured forth from the Victrola:

I works on the levee mama both night and day

I ain’t got nobody, keep the water away.



She scoffed. How fitting, she thought, wiping her feet on the doormat. She walked to the counter and was holding up her mother’s list to Stanley when she paused. A voice, alto, full of vibrato, was singing along to the music. It was the most beautiful thing Hazel had ever heard. It sounded like a man had swallowed a nightingale.

A tall, unknown boy stood at the Victrola. After spending years delivering mended dresses to countless households in North Memphis, Hazel just about knew every face in Douglass. This boy was new, foreign. Hand in his pocket, his back to Hazel, he tapped his foot to the music and sang along in a way that made Hazel forget herself for a moment, forget the grocery list, the many scheduled appointments in her mother’s shop. All she wanted to do was stare and listen.

Stanley must have seen the change in Hazel. He smiled knowingly and cocked his head toward the boy. “Go on. Say hello.” Stanley’s thick German accent made his words seem more like commands than a friendly suggestion.

Hazel’s eyes widened, and she sucked in air. Bit her lip and twisted her long gold rosary.

“Go on,” Stanley said, gently taking the list from Hazel’s hand. “I’ll get these things for you.”

Hazel watched Stanley start to climb the ladder along his high shelves to retrieve a sack of flour. Watching him felt like watching sap trickle down a maple.

Just as slowly, she turned to the boy and took the full sight of him in. He was the color of indigo. Hazel had never seen somebody that midnight dark before. Her eyes scanned the long length of him. She fingered her rosary as she admired the graceful shape of his head and his long and lean shoulders. She caught glimpses of his face as he turned his head this way and that, eyes closed, singing along. Small flashes of thick lips and high cheekbones and peach fuzz on his chiseled chin. It was hard not to melt there on the spot. Hazel took him in like he was a tall glass of lemonade on the hottest of August days.

Hazel exhaled, steadied herself. Approached. Thought better of it. Withdrew. Took a step back, then another.

Every hair on Hazel’s body rose: Her back had hit something, someone. That was unexpected. The deli was small, and she was sure no one else had come in—but who knows? The dark boy, just the sight of him, had mesmerized her. She was caught in his gravity, thrust out of her usual, discreet watchfulness. She hadn’t heard the small bell over the front door chime, announcing a new visitor. She hadn’t seen the police officer—white as a clam, wide as a fence—push open the door and enter the deli. Hadn’t seen him remove his cap and cock his head at the sight of two Negro children in the white section of a Southern establishment.

But she did hear—and jump—when his deep voice rang out over Memphis Minnie’s, “Girl, have you lost your ever-loving mind?”

Girl. Hazel tensed. It was instinctive. She knew, without having to turn around, that the man was white—which was just a synonym for a death warrant in the South.

In a flash, the boy had spun on his heel and was on her, tugging at her sleeve, pulling her to him and away from the officer. His eyes—big, dark pools—seemed to plead with hers.

Come to me, his eyes said. Come to me right this second.

“Stanley, you let niggers dance up in here?”

At first, Hazel let herself be pulled by the boy. The tug on her sleeve grew more insistent, and she felt herself being led away from the danger. Hazel knew she should keep going, fold into the embrace of this new, dark boy, handsome as the night. Knew he was safety. This boy would be her blessing, her salvation. A minute ago, she would have given anything to have him turn around so she could see him in his full beauty.

But something in Hazel pulled back against her retreat, made her hesitate. It was the same force that swiveled Lot’s wife’s head around; the same longing, the same nagging desire within Anna Karenina as she watched that train approach, breathless and defiant. Whatever it was, Hazel succumbed to it.

She did something then that was unheard of in Memphis—unheard of anywhere in the South without death following like a shadow. Hazel looked at the white man. Full-on. She twisted her head around and threw her eyes directly at the large white man behind her. Beheld him without bent head or lowered gaze or blinking eye.