What We All Long For Dionne Brand (love story novels in english .TXT) đ
- Author: Dionne Brand
Book online «What We All Long For Dionne Brand (love story novels in english .TXT) đ». Author Dionne Brand
He took Jackie up in her lessons. âYou gonna have a high school diploma, Jackie baby. Do better than me. Do better than your mother.â
âYeah, Daddy.â
â âYeah, Daddyâ? You say âYes, Daddy.â No yeah this and yeah that.â
âYes, Daddy.â
Jackieâs father didnât get a high school diploma, not because he couldnât but because there wasnât time. There wasnât time for that among the six brothers and one sister that he had. They had to work, and besides, when the older ones were ready, Nova Scotia wasnât ready, what with de facto segregation and what with Jackieâs grandmother and grandfather needing the help. And when Jackieâs father was ready, it still wasnât worth it for a black person to have an education. Where would you put it? What would you do with it, what good was it? What kind of job would you get with it? Jackieâs father had the kind of sense that matteredâstreet sense. Thatâs the kind of intelligence that was worth something. Here in Toronto heâd come to a feeling that it wasnât worth passing on. It was good enough for him and Jackieâs mother. He figured they were country, they were from down home, but Jackie was going to be from here.
Jackie liked the attention. She loved the few weeks when there was no Paramount and nothing up to standard for her mother and father to go to. It was like being on holiday. She already had a picture-postcard idea of how her family should be, and it was coming true.
âJackie, go over to Liz and see if sheâll take you tonight.â Her mother, testing the waters.
âI ainât going.â
â âAinâtâ?â Jackieâs father.
âI am not going.â
âThatâs right now, but you going.â
âNo.â
âDo like your mother says, girl.â
âCanât. Wonât. Cannot, will not. Stay with Aunt Liz.â
âYou cut a switch to beat yourself there, my man.â Jackieâs mother to Jackieâs father. âSheâs telling you now. But, girl, donât let me have to get up.â
Much as she tried, though, Jackie couldnât keep her mother and father away from the Duke.
They had turned the Paramount into a liquor store by the time Jackie grew up. Thereâs no sign of the life it once had. When Jackieâs mother and father pass by these days, itâs all a different place. All their good times, dancing and fighting and styling, gone. All their nights with Marvin Gayeâs âHere, My Dearâ and Stevie Wonderâs âIn the City,â all their youth has been jackhammered open, dug up, and cemented over in a concrete-and-glass brand new liquor store with small red-and-green tiles on the front. Thereâs no sign of their sweet life, the dancingâthatâs what they mostly missâthe high-platformed shoes, the thrill of meeting the R & B bands after hours, the particular night when Jackieâs mother almost ran off with the bass player from Parliament Funkadelic and Jackieâs father had to stage the drama of his lifeâwalking out the door as if he didnât care, so she would know that if she was gone, she was goneâto get her back.
How does life disappear like that? It does it all the time in a city. One moment a corner is a certain corner, gorgeous with your desires, then it disappears under the constant construction of this and that. A bank flounders into a pizza shop, then into an abandoned building with boarding and graffiti, then after weeks of you passing it by, not noticing the infinitesimal changes, it springs to life as an exclusive condo. This liquor store that was the Paramount will probably, unnoticed, do the same thing in three or four years, and the good times Jackieâs mother and father had hereâthe nights when nights werenât long enough, when they all ended up at a blind pig on St. Clair Avenue because they couldnât go to sleep with so much life lighting up their beautiful bodies, or at Franâs on College, eating greasy eggs at three or four in the morningâall this, their lovely life, they would not be able to convince anyone it had existed.
FIFTEEN
HE WANTED TO PLAY her Ornette Colemanâs âEmbraceable You.â He wanted to play her Coltraneâs âVenus,â Monkâs âI Surrender, Dearâ and âDonât Blame Me.â So he did. He called her and left them all on her answering machine. One every other day. He said nothing in case he put his foot in his mouth again. She would know, he told himself. She would know if he played Dexter Gordon blowing âLaura,â Charles Mingusâs âBetter Get It in Your Soul,â and Charlie Rouseâs âWhen Sunny Gets Blue.â And he wouldâve played her Billie Holiday singing âYouâve Changed,â except that he couldnât play Billie Holiday without bawling his eyes out, and he wanted to be limber strong so that he could seduce her. So he sent her Charlie Rouse playing âWhen Sunny Gets Blueâ twice. He thought that Rouseâs hoarse velvet horn best described all the levels of his love for her, the slow and quiet way he wanted to talk to her, the intimacy he wanted to evoke. And he played her âVenusâ more times than he could recall because he felt that tender, that undone with her, that out in space, that uncertain of boundaries, and that much in peril if she didnât love him back.
After Oku did all this he felt shy, stupid. He never thought of himself as stupid, only with Jackie. It occurred to him that she must be annoyed coming home to crazy music on her answering machine. She could mistake him for some kind of freak stalking her, and he didnât want her to think that, but he couldnât stop. He became so engaged in this seduction, he hardly worried about his father any more. Fuck it, he thought, it all had to come to a head soon anyway, and he had to move out of the house. If he loved Jackie, he was beyond Fitz; if he loved Jackie, he could do anything. This mission to send Jackie all
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