George & Rue Read Online Free

muscle and hard bone, no fat on his frame: a square-headed, square-shouldered, black son of a bitch. He was so ugly, in actuality, Cynthy thought, that she could wear out a whole dictionary to describe just how sorry her husband was. What had been so beautiful now seemed disgusting. In their marriage she had gone from the molasses keg and its sulphurous sweetness to the pickle barrel and its salty sour. Instead of dying with laughter, out of joy, she felt like a laughingstock. She wanted to be petted, fondled, praised, kissed, licked, lapped, tickled, teased, spoiled, and made love to like in glamour magazines.
    And she ain’t forgotten, wouldn’t ever forget, that red-suited white man at the Kentville train station, that same spring she’d met Asa, who whispered, suavely, “Now, as beautiful as Nova Scotia gals are, ain’t ya the most beautiful brown Nova Scotia gal I ever see?” Why, he’d even pinched her patooty and praised her “plump and pleasant” rump.
    “You’re like a pretty little hurrah’s nest, miss.”
    She were indignant to him, but the man guffawed, said, “You got talent to go with the type, I bet. I bet you could shimmy, tango, and warble blues to go.”
    Cynthy’d switched away from that red-silk-suited white manwith the blue tie, but he’d yelled at her sashaying bottom, “Ya come to Montreal, you come by Rufus’s Paradise, he’s a Negro gent who’ll fix you up for big things.”
    Then the train puffed in and the red-white-blues man vamoosed. From then on, she’d craved Montreal. She even kept that name Rufus close to her heart. She knew she’d give it to a son for good luck. When her second son was born, she felt he was
spiritually
that white man’s son. She’d have to go meet this Montreal Rufus.
    What was Montreal? Her Harlem, her Heaven. From movie magazines and cousins, she knew it was rum that was fire in the mouth and satin in the belly. It was women who could cross ice—black ice—on stiletto heels and never fear losing their balance. It was women who could wear mink in the summer and make a hot day go chilly. It was being a show-offy dancer—a Chocolate Scandal—whose swishing bum would excite a man to dump his stash on drinks and tips. It was rye-and-ginger, Sweet Caporals, and smoky martinis. It was American cigarettes—caramel and tarty—and gangster
argot
and
panache.
It was elegant café-coloured legs and Ellingtonlike
café-au-lait
faces. It was a daily breakfast of brioches, croissants, orange juice, three cups of coffee, three beef sausages, an apple, and a muffin. Montreal was frontier Paris, a Habitant Manhattan.
    Now there were two living babies amid the graveyard that Three Mile Plains could be, if they didn’t get out. Cynthy called the new baby Rufus, or Rue. But he was a bother—rufous in tint and rueful in mood. Too much like his papa. Cynthy was headstrong though. She’d clear-cut a way.
    She had to. It weren’t possible for her to play a slave—Marie-Josèphe Angélique—or a saint—Joan of Arc—and exhibit such a painful degree of hurtful patience or of suicidal humility. Asa was too-goddamn insufferable.
    Asa could raise his bull-faced fist and hit. He could whip her with a thin branch stripped to the green, hot sting. He could swear, “I’ll hurt you in ways you’ll wish to God you didn’t have to be hurt.” But Cynthy knew, on that dull morning in January 1927, she’d purchase a red dress, she’d go to Montreal.
    So what if the Depression got in the way? For a woman without a cent to start with, money was just another luxury unnecessary for a “tolerable” life. Champagne could be rain and ginger ale; a ball gown could be cut from white women’s cast-off curtains; cosmetics could be strained from berries and apples.
    Cynthy’s real tragedy was, her tyrannical household. She’d take a hotcomb to give her “good” hair more curl, and Asa’d snarl, “Why doncha just wear a do-rag?” The very looks that’d prompted him to give