her, it let her go, the ship, white as a bone, to drift away down the morning.
CHICAGO 1927
Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez’s writing—fiction, poetry, essays, and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of venues, both feminist and mainstream. A social activist with careers in theatre, public television, the arts, and philanthropy, she is best known for her novel The Gilda Stories (1991). The vampire, Gilda, is an escaped slave who comes of age over a span of more than two hundred years. Vampirism itself is a gentle and mutually beneficial exchange: Gilda delves into a human mind and, in exchange for the blood taken, she leaves a belief the individual can achieve something very important to them. Taking a lesbian/feminist perspective, Gomez places her protagonist in a series of adventures in different eras and communities that exist at the edge of white middle-class America. Gilda herself—black and lesbian—is an outsider among the ultimate outsiders: vampires. Gomez also authored a theatrical adaptation of The Gilda Stories, retitled Bones and Ash, which toured thirteen U.S. cities in 1996.
“Chicago 1927” gives us a slice of Gilda’s immortal life as she experienced it during the Roaring Twenties…
High and light, the rich notes of her song lifted from the singer like a bird leaving a familiar tree. The drummer stopped and only a bass player snuck up behind her voice, laying out deep tones that matched hers. Gilda stood at the back of the dimly lit room, letting the soothing sound of music ripple through the air and fall gently around her. Her gaze was fixed on the woman singing on the tiny stage, whose body was coiled around the sound of her own voice. Gilda had come to the Evergreen each weekend for a month to hear the woman sing. LYDIA REDMOND, INDIAN LOVE CALL the window card read outside underneath her picture. On her first night walking through the streets of Chicago, Gilda had seen the sign and been drawn by the gleaming beauty of the face.
The sheer simplicity of Lydia’s voice rang persistently inside Gilda’s head.
The smoky air and clink of glasses crowded around Gilda, filling the room almost as much as the attentive audience. Black and brown faces bobbed and nodded as they sat at the tiny tables on mismatched chairs.
Others stood at the short bar watching the set along with the tall, light-skinned bartender, Morris. Some stood in the back near the entrance transfixed, as did Gilda.
She had finally created the opportunity to meet Lydia Redmond through the club’s owner Benny Green. It had taken only a slight glance held a moment longer than necessary to plant the idea, and Benny treated Gilda like she was a long-missed relative. Lydia had been full of playfulness when they’d sat together at Benny’s table after her show one night. The luminescence in the photograph that had drawn Gilda shimmered around Lydia when she laughed. The sorrow that cloaked so many club singers had only a small place within Lydia. When she looked into Gilda’s eyes, she’d read her so intently that Gilda had to turn away.
The last note of a sweet, bluesy number wavered in the air, then was enveloped in unrestrained applause and shouts. Gilda smiled as she slipped out of the door of the club’s entrance into the short alley and was startled to see Benny holding a young boy by the collar.
“I ain’t jivin’ you, Lester. You get home to your sister right now. You want me stoppin’ by to have a talk to her?”
“Naw.”
“Naw what?”
“Naw sir.”
“I done told you don’t hang in this alley. You ain’t heard they shootin’ people this side of town?”
“Yes sir,” the boy said blankly as if he’d been told he was standing in a loading dock.
“I’m tellin’ you there’s been shootin’ here, boy! Don’t crap out on me.”
“Yes sir.” Lester let himself show the surprise he felt,
“Here,” Benny said as he handed the boy a folded bill. He looked about seven years old and was dressed in pants and a jacket much too large for him, like many children Gilda had seen.
“Take that to your sister.” Benny’s thin mustache curved up as his lips could no longer resist a smile. “Tell her come by my office tomorrow … no, not tomorrow. Make it the next day, tell her come at noontime. Ya hear?”
“Yes … yes sir.” The child’s face lost its stiff fear and as Benny shoved him toward the mouth of the alley, he almost smiled.
“Damn.”
“A colleague?” Gilda said lightly.
“He’d like to be.