Seen It All and Done the Rest by Pearl Cleage Read Free Book Online

coat in a courtly gesture I’m sure he learned from a gentlemanly grandfather or an old copy of
Playboy.
    “Thank you,” I said, slipping my arms into the silk-lined sleeves quickly. Zora was standing beside the table and I couldn’t help noticing that even her hands were too thin. She looked tired and tense and irritable.
    “Excuse me, miss?” MacArthur’s voice floated tentatively in Zora’s direction. I imagined him peeking around from behind me like a kid on the first day at a new school. Zora ignored him.
    “Miss?”
    I stepped away from him and waited for her to answer.
    “Are you talking to me?” she finally said, real nasty, like even the idea of such an exchange was insulting to her.
    MacArthur was not dissuaded by her tone. He picked up the copy of
Dig It!
lying open in the chair beside where Zora had been sitting and pointed to the picture of her dancing ecstatically with her doomed companion.
    “Is this you?”
    Zora didn’t blink. “No.”

FIVE

    Z ora was house-sitting in the heart of West End, just a few blocks away, and she drove home down Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, the neighborhood’s main commercial strip. It had been almost ten years since I’d been in Atlanta to handle the family business when my mom died, and I was happy to see that things still looked good around here. This community is unique. No trash in the streets, good lighting everywhere, and an absence of predators. We stopped at a red light near the neighborhood mall and there were still people shopping even though it was almost midnight. There was a line at the sub shop on the corner and at the twenty-four-hour hair salon; business was booming. Every chair was occupied as patient women flipped through old magazines and waited for their stylist to beckon.
    I always love the ebb and flow of sisterhood that forms in salons between those being served, those waiting to be served, and the anointed ones we have trusted with our crowning glory. I wear my hair short because it’s easy and I like the way it looks. Puts the focus on my face. I used to shave my head and that was always fun, although if everybody adopted such a look, stylists would have to close up shop and then where would we gather?
    The woman at the all-night florist next door to the salon was constructing an elaborate window display featuring an amazing bunch of tropical blossoms that looked like they would have been at home in a window box in Martinique. I made a mental note to visit the shop as soon as I got my bearings. I had no idea what to expect at the house Zora was watching, but there’s always room for fresh flowers. There were people visible through the windows of the West End News, browsing through the magazines or drinking coffee at the tables near the big front window. It reminded me of the International Sky Café, except I didn’t see anybody smoking. A young woman with a backpack came out the front door, looked up at the big full moon, and headed off with a private smile of appreciation.
    Zora took a left and eased the car carefully through the quiet tree-lined streets. It wasn’t the season for the famous gardens to be in bloom, but I could see them everywhere, already turned over, mulched, and fertilized in readiness for spring. A few brave souls had put in winter collards, but most of these gardeners didn’t plant until Good Friday, traditionally the day to put your plants in the ground. The woman who started the West End Growers Association used to live across the hall from Zora in her old apartment building and had a huge garden there that started on one side, wrapped around the back, and was legendary, according to Zora, for the size and sweetness of its tomatoes. Zora had sent me some great pictures of her and some other women working in that garden, and they looked like they were having a ball.
    “Is Blue Hamilton still the man to know around here?” I said.
    “He’s the one,” Zora said. “That’s his house right there.”
    She