Song of the Shank

The Negress releases her head from the bonnet, rubs the color out of her face, and becomes someone else, half woman, half deception. Tabbs Gross.

You.

I brought him, Tom says.

Then they say nothing for a time, wordless knowledge. The room seems composed of impossible red and yellow hues. And it seems terribly strange to her that she should meet this man now with no anger at all, something quite different in her feelings. This new emotion, whatever it is, sternly demands that she pay no attention to him, pretend nothing has happened—I’m here to take the boy to his mother—no interest or shock, that they share no history. He seems to walk about the room, triumphant, looking and touching, his presence physical and insistent, her attention taken by his sex-changing stunt, a man fluted in a beautiful dress standing in the middle of her room. Then he goes over to examine the piano. Now Tom starts to move. For some time he strides about the room with the unnamed Negro boy following him like a clumsy devoted animal.

She and Tom let their hands touch. Mr. Gross keeps a respectful distance, his eyes changed with reduced feeling. He seems nervous, even afraid. Then he is speaking, light bright words flying and chirping like birds in the room, busy with claims and proclamations. Here he is talking about the piano. She would have expected Tom to come upon the piano first.

To where? Where will we go?

South.

Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that? Suddenly she is glad to have them here in the country with her, her buried senses unearthed. Remembering (what else?) the beautiful boy in boots — Sharpe — the black leather long and lean. And now Mr. Gross in a dress with boots of his own, dress cupping their length. He is saying something that she can’t hear. She smiles at him, wanting to get over the fact that he had accused her before, that he had taken Tom away from her at a time when she could no longer tolerate the boy’s presence, but he had done it in such a way to imply neglect and cruelty on her part. (She could say to him, I was here when no one else was.) And Tom. (Glory!) Tom who manages to veer away from the boy shadowing him and is now holding her at the elbow, hugging her, touching her hair, Eliza aware of the boy’s protective eyes taking in this moment. Indeed, she is going places that she does not understand. Fine by her. She can’t remain here.

Tom sits on the floor, his legs spread and his head hanging from his neck like a heavy flower.

Tabbs squeezes into the last of the petticoats. The dress will come next, cotton smothering his strength, putting male and female together to deny the one and to lie about the other. He had removed shirt, pants, undergarments — layers of events and incidents, taking on new layers, a determined creature, his face immaculately shaved, smooth to the touch, not a trace of hair. And with color at his mouth and cheeks, his face brightly exaggerated by rouge, he actually looks like a woman, a Negress. Now, a touch of perfume. Then the head scarf, the final touch. Earlier, he felt like a chicken standing there naked in the room, sunlight like hot wax unfeathering him. Through no fault of his own he has to relinquish this part of his self, conceal his sex, for the sake of practicality and safety, the closest he can come to a kind of invisibility. Figures the alabasters probably won’t attack him if they think he is a woman. Hopefully, the orphan’s youth will be protection enough for him. (Women and children.)

I got to dress up too? the boy asks.

No need. The boy is so thin that his clothes seem to have made an effort to fit as close as possible to his body so as not to miss his ghostly proportion of skin and bone.

Mr. Tabbs.

You can’t call me that. Once we’re out there, no misters.

Okay, Mr. Tabbs. The boy goes on looking at Tabbs, nodding at some private thought.

You just remember to keep an eye on Tom.

You ain’t got to worry about me. I done worked as a navigator befo.

He will set out again. He must set out again. He sets out again — his choices are his choices — for a country estate on the murky outskirts of the city (the geometry of moving from here to there). His motives for traveling are justifiable. Fill up your horn with oil and be on your way. He will find the Bethune woman, his duty to press on, but his brain runs in the wrong direction, trying to push down, unable to push down, one grisly thought that speeds repeatedly through his head: What if she is gone for good? How then will he get Tom to budge?

Earlier all evening he kept discovering himself stilled, unable to think. Now he must go directly toward what he fears.