In
Honor Of Women's History Month- Lucy On The Edge Of The World
From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Lucy
On The Edge Of The World
People, ordinary vagrant night owls,
hung-over refugees from the now closed bars and cabarets that dotted high Massachusetts
Avenue and low Brattle Street, average vagabond wanderers of the Harvard Square
night afraid to go home to face some wrath, the shiftless, the toothless
homeless lacking that benighted nickel for subway fare or having made an
erroneous judgment in favor of sweet sickly Thunderbird wine, came into the
all-night Hayes-Bickford seeking, like him, relieve from their collective
woes with a cup of weak-kneed coffee and steamed, steamed everything. They,
whatever their condition, whatever their motives, did not bother Lucy (the
first name Lucy was all anybody ever found out about her as far as he knew, at
least that was all he turned up upon later inquiry) sitting alone at her “reserved” table
in the back of the cafeteria toward the rest rooms.
Lucy
Lilac, nicknamed that last part by some ancient want-to-be fellow bard perhaps and
it stuck. At least she would brighten up and answer to that call (that moniker’s
genesis like her real surname undisclosed to him by the other regular tenants
of the night when he asked around). She spent her youthful (she was perhaps
twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, had just finished college, he had heard, so
that age seemed about right) middle of the nights just then hunched over a
yellow legal notepad filling up its pages with her writings and occasionally
she would speak in a melodious sing-song voice some tidbit she had written out
loud, not harmful out loud like some of the drunks at a few of the tables, or
some homeless wailing banshee cry, but just out loud.
Some
of it he thought was beautiful the words glued together in such a way that
spoke of serious and thoughtful labors, and some of it was, well, doggerel, words
strewn about in fashionable if haphazard free verse, about par for the
course with poets and other writers, But all of it, whatever he heard of it,
was centered on her plight in the world as a woman torn, as a woman on the
edge, the edge between two societies, between her membership in the generic
human race and her ragamuffin fate as a woman reduced to second-class human
citizenship a kindred of the black masses. Between, as one professor put it
whom he had asked about it later, two cultural gradients if that term has any
meaning beyond the academy. And maybe she had been stuck that way but let’s let
him try to reconstruct what it was all about, all about for Lucy Lilac night
owl. See he became so fascinated by where she was going with her muse in those 1962
summer nights, about how she was going to resolve that battle between “cultural
gradients” and about the gist of what she had to say to a callow world in those
days that he turned up many a “two in morning” to try to figure her dream out.
He had more than a passing interest in this battle since he was also spooked by
those same demons that she spoke of.
[Oh,
by the way, for the curious, Lucy Lilac, was drop-dead beautiful, with long
black iron-pressed straight hair as was the style then, alabaster white skin
whether from her odd hours of sleep or by genetic design was not clear,
big red lips, which he did not know whether was in style then or not, the
bluest eyes of blue, always wearing dangling earrings. Usually as well wearing
some long dress so it was never really possible to determine her figure or her
legs, important pieces of knowledge to him, and not just to him, in those
sex-obsessed days, but he would have said slender and probably nice legs
too. Since neither her beauty, nor the idea of sex, at least pick-up sex, enter
into this sketch that is all that needs to be pointed out. Except this, her
beauty, along with that no-nonsense demeanor, was so apparent that it held him,
and others too, off from anything other than an occasional distant forlorn
smile. ]
What
Lucy Lilac would speak of, like a lot of the young in those days, was her
alienation from parents, society, just everything to keep the list from getting
out of hand, but not just that. On that she had kindred spirits in
abundance. She was also alienated from her race like lot of the young, him
included, were in those days as well. Alienated from her nine-to-five-go-by-the-rules-we-are-in-charge-trample
on the rest of the world, especially the known black world white race. Part
of it was that you could not turn open a newspaper or turn on a radio or
television without having the ugly stuff going down south in America (and
sometimes stuff in the north too confronting you headlong). But part of it was
an affinity with black culture (one of the gradients, okay), mainly through
music and a certain style, a certain swagger in the face of a world filled with
hostility. “Cool,” to use just one word.
Now
this race thing, this white race thing of Lucy’s had nothing to do, he did not
think, at least when she spoke that thought never came through, with some kind
of guilt by association with the rednecks and crackers down in places like
Alabama and Mississippi goddams. It was more that given the deal going down in
the world, the injustices, the not having had any say in what was going on, or
being asked about it either make her feel like she was some Negro in some shack
some place. Some mad priestess fellaheena scratching the good earth to make her
mark.
As
Lucy expanded her ideas each night (and began to get a little be-bop flow into
her voice as she spoke, a flow that he secretly kept time to), he got a better
sense of what she was trying to say. (He later learned though one of her poems,
that she had been, as he had, very influenced by Norman Mailer’s 1950s essay in
The Partisan Review The White Negro, a
screed on what Mailer called the white hipster, those who had parted company
with their own culture and moved to the sexier, sassy cultural gradient.) And
while Lucy and he were both comfortably ensconced in the cozy Cambridge
Hayes-Bickford (well maybe not cozy but
safe anyway) and had some very white skin to not have to James Crow worry about
he began to see what she meant.
And
Lucy Lilac really hit home when she spoke of how she had been, to his surprise
since she gave every indication of being some cast-off Mayfair swell’s progeny,
minus that important alienation thing, brought up under some tough
circumstances down in New Jersey. She spoke about being from poor, very poor
white folks somewhere around Toms River, her father out of work a lot worrying
about the next paycheck and keeping him and his under some roof, her mother
harried by taking care of five kids on two kids’ money, about being ostracized
by the other better off kids, about seeking solace in listening to Bessie
Smith, Billie, and a ton of other blues names that he recognized. And he too
recognized a fellahin kindred since his own North Adamsville existence seemed
so similar.
Yes,
those nights he knit a secret and unknown bond with Lucy Lilac, Lucy who a few
months later vanished from the Hayes-Bickford night, Lucy from the edge of the
world, and wherever she wound up he knew just what she meant by the white Negro
hipster-dom she was seeking, and that maybe he was too…
And
hence this Women’s History Month
contribution.