My Short Story: "Conversation in a Hotel Bar."

 

Copyright Glo Lewis 9/14/2023

 

Dear Readers of My Blog, 💚

 

I have decided to share my short story, “Conversation in a Hotel Bar,” with you. Here it is below (As usual, God bless, and I'll be in touch soon):

 

Conversation in a Hotel Bar

 

Copyright Glo Lewis 9/14/2023

 

 

 

 

   We were with the new church, The Greater Evangelical Church at the Beach. Our pastor had grouped us in “twos” and sent us off to commune with each other for a few hours. “Really get to know your neighbor, and judge not,” he said.

   I was paired with Violet, a middle-aged African American woman whose deeply lined face bespoke a history steeped in melancholy. Her dark hair was short. She wore a red suit, red lipstick, and smiled kindly at me. Her teeth glinted like porcelain. She held her Bible with thin, leathery hands and walked with sure dignity out of the church doors.

   “Where would you like to go?” she asked.

   “Want to get a glass of wine somewhere?”

   “Girl, it don’t seem proper,” she said with a mischievous smile.

   “Even Jesus drank wine,” I offered.

   She touched my arm. “Let’s ask the pastor if that’s something we should do.”

   Feeling like the bad one, I slouched along behind her as we sought out Pastor Bill.

   “‘Drink wine, but don’t get drunk,’ the Bible admonishes us,” Pastor Bill observed, his bald head shining in the cloudy sunlight.

   “I guess a glass of wine would be all right,” Violet said, her brow wrinkling in what I interpreted to be skepticism.

   We headed out, with me leading the way in my old gray Lincoln that I referred to as “Abe,” and Violet following in her pristine, white Toyota. The Sea Star Inn faced the ocean and was only a few blocks away. I headed in that direction with my sunroof open and the salt wind blowing my long hair around like a horse’s tail.

   We sat at a table in the bar and ordered two glasses of the house wine that turned out to be a pungent Merlot. Violet extended one of her long, bony hands with well-painted red nails and asked me my name. Her skin was a dark mahogany color next to my opaque white-stockings look.

   “I’m Terra,” I said. “I know you’re Violet. We’ve spoken briefly before.”

   “Yes,” she said, “but I couldn’t recollect your name. Nice to meet you.” We shook hands.

   “Yes, lovely,” I said, and sniffed my wine, committing the sin of envy as I admired her graceful presence.

   “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself,” she said, her dark eyes flashing a spark of light like an emerald.

   I glanced out the window and watched the sunlight dance on the rocking surf below. “Well, that’s the hard part, isn’t it? I mean, where does a person begin?”

   “Begin anywhere at all,” she said.

   “You mean before or after I was kidnapped,” I said, for some childish reason wanting to impress by shocking.

   “You were kidnapped?” Violet’s face crinkled into a mask of horror. “When was this?”

   “When I was ten.”

   “Oh, girl, you got to tell me this story!”

   I sipped my wine before answering. “I want to, but I’m not sure why.”

   “Sure you’re sure, girl. You need to tell it to someone. You need to get that off your chest-- that spirit of fear. Then we can pray about it.” Violet caressed the burgundy cover of her Bible. I stared at her, intertwining my fingers back and forth, not sure where to start. Violet smiled sweetly and touched my hand; her fingers felt rough and icy cold. “Go on. Tell me.”

   I put my head down and rubbed my forehead in thought, as though my fingers would excise the terrible memory from my burdened mind. I exhaled loudly. “As I said, I was ten at the time and sort of skipping down the street, going to the local market. A neighbor, Earl Garnett, came out of his house as I passed. He was a sketchy type who seemed to have a problem with everyone, and most of the neighbors avoided him. ‘Hey, you’re Terra, ain’t you?’ he said. I didn’t answer and kept going. When I turned around a few minutes later, I saw that he was right behind me. I started to run. I was a fast runner then; only one girl in school, who was a year older than I was, could beat me at running fast on the schoolyard. I charged out into the street, but he leaped after me and grabbed my sweater. ‘Not so fast, missy! Want to suck a hairy banana?’ he said.

   My heart was in my throat. I looked around for help, but the neighborhood was quiet. I had been sick that morning and stayed home from school. He slid his hands down my pants and touched me. I struggled and managed to twist and kick him in the shin. He reared back so surprised that even I was stunned by the shock in his face. Then I began to run for my life in a sort of out-of-body experience the likes of which I’d never experienced before and which seemed to spread out in the empty streets like dark opera music, growing larger and larger. But he caught up with me again and lifted me into the air and onto the sidewalk across the street under the big trees. I screamed. At that moment, a car approached. Mr. Garnett hissed at me, ‘Smile, or I’ll kill you right here.’ My heart was hammering in my chest.

   “The car slowed. It was an old brown station wagon. An elderly man was driving, and a white-haired woman leaned out the passenger window. ‘Are you all right, little girl?’ she asked. I smiled as best I could, wishing I could scream.

   “‘She’s fine, ma’am. I’m her daddy,’ Mr. Garnett said, suddenly petting my hair. The woman looked doubtful, glancing from me to him and back, but then the car rolled on by into the neighboring streets.”

   “Did they come back?” Violet asked, worry creasing her face.

   “No, that’s just it: When the station wagon was out of sight, Mr. Garnett twisted my arm behind my back and threw me into his car on the passenger side. He said, ‘Don’t get wise, or it will be the last bit of thinkin’ you do. I might even decide to do some bodily harm to your momma.’ He told me to relax, and he would take us for a drive. He smiled when he said this, and I saw that two teeth were missing in the right side of his mouth, making him look quite sinister. I began to shake violently with terror.”

   “You need pastoral counseling for this, girl. Have you had counseling?” Violet inquired.

   “No. I’ve been thinking about it, and my friends say I should talk to someone, but I’m not ready. More wine?”

   “You go ahead, Terra. I’m just listenin’ to your story. Go on, tell me about it.”

   I signaled the waiter. “One more, just for me,” I said when he arrived.

   “After that, everything is kind of a blur of passing trees, a car chase, the police, and then a few hours later I was back home with my parents. The old couple had called the cops.”

   “That’s quite a story. You are a strong woman. Let’s pray.”

   “Later, okay? Why don’t you tell me about yourself first?”

   A waiter passed by with a tray of sizzling shrimp hors d’oeuvres, while another server whipped a white tablecloth into the air like an albino stingray and laid it out neatly over a table.

   Violet waved her hand like a hanky. “Girl, so much has happened in my life that I wouldn’t know where to start either.”

   I licked a drop of wine from the rim of my newly delivered second glass. “Start anywhere.”

   “You want to hear about my kids? My husband? My job? Or my sick parents?”

   “Tell me about you, Violet.”

   “I want to tell you about my kids. My kids are me. I put everything into them kids. They is my beating heart.”

   “How many kids do you have?”

   “I have five beautiful children—but they all grown now. My mother, bless her heart, had 16 children; five of them died when they was jest babies.”

   “So you have ten siblings!”

   “That’s right,” Violet said, smiling. And we all close. Close as can be. You know how it is nowadays. People living all over the place, but we close. We get together for family reunions, weddings, funerals. My people stretching out their hand all over this country.”

   I nodded. “I only have one sister, but we are the best of friends, so it’s enough. And my brother-in-law is more of a brother than an in-law.”

   “Yes, sometimes that’s the way it is, if we are fortunate.” Violet sampled her wine with a delicacy normally reserved for religious communion. “When my own children be fussin’ and fightin,’ even now that they grown, I tell them, ‘Listen, you got but one life to live, and you need to get busy livin’ it, and love one another, cause ’fore you know it, you done.’”

   A waiter passed by with a juicy-looking steak on a white china plate. It smelled like hickory, garlic, and butter. I was getting hungry but contented myself with the wine.

   “That’s the truth. Life goes by like a comet, my mother used to say.”

   “Ain’t no words for it. But my children is good. Uh huh, they good. They raisin’ their kids right, to do good. I think I done good with my life—better than I thought I would—better than most, I expect. But I don’t hold with all the teachin’s in the church. I done broke away from some of that,” Violet said, rubbing her hands together as though deciding on a prayer.

   “What do you mean?” I asked.

   She touched my hand. “Terra, I grew up along the Mississippi Delta. I mean right near the river itself. My daddy used to fish for our supper. We was very poor. Most folks I knew was poor. When I married my husband, Fountain, and started having babies, he said, ‘Vi—we got to get us on up outa here, or we and them kids ain’t never going to amount to much.’ My husband is a smart man—not always a good man, but a smart one. We got on up outa the Delta. Finally left Mississippi for good. We go back sometimes when they’s a family function, you know. But largely, we gone now some forty years. It’s a long time to be away from your kinfolk. We still glad we done it though.” Violet looked around. “People havin’ lunch.”

   “Do you want to have lunch? I could eat.”

   “Maybe a little something,” she said.

   We ordered tomato bisque soup and turkey sandwiches with pickles on rye bread—the lunch special.

   “So when were you last in Mississippi?” I asked.

   “Fountain and I went with three of our kids last year.”

   “How are things down there?”

   “They bad. They always been bad, and I expect they probably always will be bad. But they better some. Some of my people got work at the tire company in Natchez, some is working at the cotton mill. Still, most folks can’t get work—most Black folk, that is. And those young girls still be having so many babies. Can’t get no relief. The right-to-lifers done made sure that illegal abortion is a felony now, so those young girls locked in poverty like a prison. And this is where I done broke with the church. My feeling is some of the right-to-lifers surely is genuinely concerned about babies dying in the womb. But I think it’s more political than that. Wealthy woman—Black or White—but mostly White in Mississippi-- can always get a secret abortion and control her destiny. A poor woman can’t escape the poverty. She trapped by all them kids. And she love them kids, but she trapped like a bear. So long these young, poor African American girls keep having these babies down there in the Delta and probably around the country, they still slaves to keep serving the wealthy White folk—doing all manner of hard labor all the day and night, rest of their lives. Don’t nobody care ‘bout that. Jest want to save babies, but for what—a life of drudgery to a system that still closing them out of everything. Who going to tell that story?”

   “I don’t know. So you think the ‘right-to-life’ people have a hidden agenda. They want a Black underclass—a slave class—to do all the work that they don’t want to do, and for little to nothing.”

   She nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. Uh huh.” She smoothed the tablecloth.

   “I never thought about it like that. I’ll bet you’re right. I see it. It makes me ashamed to be White.”

   “We all one people. We all come from one people. I learned that. It’s such a shame that most folk can’t see that.”

   The waiter served our soup and sandwiches and poured us some iced water from a frosty stainless steel pitcher that he left on the table.

   “It is a shame, Violet. It’s exploitation.”

   “Sure it is. I feel that way. I never was so political before in my life. I talked to the pastor about this because it breaks my heart to side with abortion. But if women don’t have the right to choose, poor women of any color will be enslaved, as surely as when they in chains.”

“I see that, Vi. I see that,” I said, nodding my head, lost in thought.

 

 

 

The End