Ulysses Hill

Under the Rolling Jazz

The smooth jazz slowly strolled through the speakeasy, melodically sauntering and swooning to the couple who sat in their usual booth of depraved secrecy in the back. The man by the name of Freeman, having long ago gotten rid of his first name, which he hated, sat with his back to the door, obscuring his face until one had squarely passed the booth. But if one was tall enough at two paces, they would see all they needed. They would see a woman by the name of Elizabeth, skin as ivory or close enough at least, sitting prim and proper with a scotch glass filled with some unknown brown liquid that suspended a few ice cubes that were already half melted in the cool heat of the spring Virginia night. And they would see at the very bottom of their sight line as if rising from the abyss the unmistakable curl of a negro man. But with the rolling jazz sauntering and swaying into oblivion, they would not hear the conversation between the two.

“We can head up to Detroit. Leave Virginia behind; get married.” Freeman said the words emphatically as the ideas came to him as if he was spitting. He needed her to say yes, though he didn’t realize how much at the time. So when her eyes lit up just the faintest bit, so faint that anyone who was not staring at her with the hopes of a dead man whose execution could be stayed by her and her alone would not see it, and even then, they might have missed it, would have certainly missed it, and perhaps, just perhaps, it was never even there, but Freeman saw it, saw it as sure as he saw the beautiful blonde girl in front of him, and he pounced on it. 

“I have family in Detroit. They’ll take us in. I can get a job in one of the factories. I'll provide for us. We'll have a good life, I promise.”

Her eyes flashed again, and the hope in his heart swelled so large that he lost himself in it. Freeman began to slow, his words, though, like a hunter who, realizing the doe he had stalked for so long was near, slowed his pace so as not to spook it.

“We’ll be happy up there. We’ll live as a family. You can be a teacher like you always wanted to. I’ll work in the factory during the day and go to law school at night. We’ll have to live with my family for a bit but we can save up money and buy a nice house in the suburbs. With a big yard for the kids to play in.”

Freeman didn’t realize it then, but he had lost himself in the dream, lost himself in a disillusion. The doe was never there. He was never the hunter. Rather, there was a bear, with long sharp claws and soft brown eyes, who had all along been stalking him, and though for a moment, an infinitesimally small moment, had considered allowing him to survive, knew that it could not be, that it was against nature. And so when Freeman finished his words and looked back at Elizabeth, a grimace that painted her face, and in her brown eyes, he saw his delusion so softly die.

“Do you hear yourself?” She asked in a voice that sounded like weeping. He wanted to respond, but there was nothing to say, and even if there had been, she didn’t let the question hang long enough for him to answer.

“We graduate next term. I’m supposed to be a teacher. You’re supposed to go off to law school.” Her voice wavered as she spoke. She was holding back tears. 

“I know we can still do that. We’ll wait, just a few months till we graduate, then we leave. You can still be a teacher. I’ll go to law school at night. I know it will be hard to do both but I’ll just get a job. So I can take care of us. I’ll take care of us. You know I will.” He countered, desperate.

“I’m not letting you give up your life, and I don’t want to give up mine.” 

“I’m not giving up my life. I’m making it better.”

He stared into her eyes and saw nothing but a brown void. So Freeman in that moment, faced with no hope of normal recourse, did what all men have always done and pleaded to God at that moment and as most men throughout history will testify, he got no response. 

“You’re being foolish.” She spat.

“Say we do what you say. We go up to Detroit, get married, live with your family. My family would never talk to me again. I could never come back here.” She was on a mission. Even Freeman saw it in her eyes, they were no longer soft. Though he didn’t realize it at the time she needed to destroy their life, to destroy any image of a future with the two of them together. Only then could she destroy their family. Only then could she walk away.

She continued in the same fierce plodding pace she had begun in “Say I’m ok with never seeing my family or home again. Then what, what are we? A mixed couple with a mulatto baby.” Freeman didn’t wince or recoil. He knew her words were coming. He knew they were true.

“Marriage,” she said, the word itself as a scoff. “We can’t even be seen together in public.” Her voice slipped at the end of the sentence and stayed there for the next “ Do you remember our first time?” She asked.

“How could I forget? You had snuck me in the side door while your parents were out. They came back early, and we almost got caught.” He replied. Freeman thought back to the young man he was just a year ago how happy and carefree he was, and it should be noted he wasn’t. He was nearly exactly as stressed and tired and scared as he was at that very moment in the booth. He was merely looking through rose-tinted glasses with which one so often views the past.

“No, you almost got killed.” Her words were cool and sharp. They were a stygian blade meant to cut me, and they did. They cut seamlessly through his carefully cultivated, calm nature.

“Do you think I don’t know that? I am well aware that every time I meet you I am risking my life. I have lived in my skin for a long time. I know what it entails.”

“Do you?” 

“Do I?!”

“Do you know what I thought the first time I saw you?” He asked, but didn’t give her time to answer.

“I thought, wow, that’s the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. But do I have a death wish?”

“You must have because I remember the first time you saw me. You immediately said hello,” she replied.

“No, you remember the first time you saw me, the first time I talked to you. I had seen you before. I saw you six months before, in the winter term, to be exact. I didn’t speak to you then. I watched you in passing for months. I told myself that you weren't worth the trouble. I would watch you across the green and scold myself for it. And then, one day, something clicked. I realized I was living on my knees. I was tired of it. If I would meet death someday, I was going to do it living. So I walked up to you, and I said hello.”

He stopped. The guilt had gotten to him even through the anger. Elizabeth eyes were full of tears. The jazz had shifted. The chatter seemed quieter, and his anger and sting of her words had subsided. Only one thing ran through his mind “They were soft again. They were soft again.” And so with renewed hope, he continued softly.

“I know what I am risking for you,” He looked through the table at her stomach that had not yet even begun to grow, “For us. I’m willing to do it. I have always been willing.”

“How?” she asked, her words a tremble.

“I love you, both of you,” Freeman said, forcing himself to smile. 

“No, how do you do it every single day? How do you live? I see how people look at you with disgust and repulsion and no remorse. As if you are the scum of the earth and deserve to be so.” 

“What other choice do I have? I was born into this world, into this place.”

He motioned to the speakeasy around them—more importantly, the booth. She realized what he meant—how, even in this place of illegality, they were forced to hide. He was forced to hide, and that's okay. It isn’t, but he’d live.

“I was given no other choice but to live, and so I will.” 

She cried. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t noticeable. Her body did not heave, and a moan did not leave her mouth. Two streams simply sprang from her eyes, and flowed down her cheeks.

“Are you ok, dear?” 

“I can’t do it,” she whispered.

She looked down at her stomach and placed her hand on the spot where a baby bump would be.

“I can’t do it to them,” she said.

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s cruel.”

“I need you to be clearer, my dear,” 

“You know I love you, Freeman, right?” she replied.

“I know, Elizabeth. That’s why we should leave.”

She stood up with her eyes closed and began to walk away. He wouldn’t let her. He grabbed her as she passed him before she could get away, and she stopped for a second.

 She looked down at her arm, at his hand firmly but gently wrapped around it. She stood there for a few moments as if examining the situation. Then she brought her gaze to Freeman's. Her eyes were no longer soft. So he had no idea she was struggling to hold back tears.

“Let go, Freeman,” she said.

Freeman obeyed, and he would never hold her again.