Space Between the Stars Read Free

playing on the hill, and I was waiting for Mom to take Kitsaun and me to the Stonestown Library for our weekend ritual of borrowing books to read during the week. Mom devoured Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming; Kitsaun and I, Nancy Drew and young fiction. Mom, Aunt Nita, Aunt Ginger, and Dad were in the kitchen, sitting around the wooden table that I had poked my name into with a fork. Aunt Ginger pulled me onto her lap, her pedal pushers smooth against my legs. Her hair was a rusty red, and she wore it swept up into a French twist, which made her nose look pointy andher ears very small. I folded my hands across my tummy, and she rubbed her palms over my fingers. Mom sat across the table, her brunette hair falling softly onto her high cheekbones. She looked like a model in her navy blue dress with small white polka dots and a thin belt that showed off her tiny waist. Dad sat near the window, his legs crossed and a toothpick between his lips. Sunlight cut across his broad nose and high forehead. His shoulders were straight, the muscles in his arms showed through his shirt. His skin shone like the wet earth that slid down our street in hard rain. Aunt Nita stood at the sink in her ruffled housedress, pouring hot water over Lipton tea bags and stirring sugar into the pitcher. Her bleached hair was flattened in curls that were twisted with bobby pins; her blond wig sat on a Styrofoam head on my dresser. “Remember when they stretched the rope down the center of the dance floor, Saun-ders?” Aunt Nita asked. “Where was that?”
    “That was a big night,” Dad said. “It was in Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee.”
    I wondered how a jump rope could reach across a dance floor. I had watched
Dance Party
on TV. Teenagers danced in a big crowd, jerking their arms and shaking their butts.
    “Damn prejudiced Southern fools!” Aunt Ginger said. “Saunders didn't allow them to separate whites and Negroes in the nightclubs he played.”
    My throat tightened. Who wanted to separate the Negroes and whites? It wasn't three o'clock yet, so I knew Aunt Ginger hadn't poured her drink, but her voice spit with the same sneering drawl she often had by nightfall when she listened to Dad's 78 rpm records over and over, drinking vodka and orangejuice, hanging her head, and nodding while trying to sing along to “Summertime” or “Danny Boy.”
    Mom folded the
San Francisco Chronicle
in half, Herb Caen's column facing up so Aunt Ginger could read it later.
    “Here, Jody.” Aunt Nita handed Mom a plastic tumbler of iced tea. “What happened that night, Saunders?”
    “Well, we were touring the South. My manager and valet drove with me in the Lincoln. The other band members were in another car. When we arrived in Nashville, my manager paid the Musicians' Union so we could play. But when we reached the nightclub, something wasn't right.”
    “Wasn't Eddie Taylor in your band then?” Nita stood in the archway, clutching her glass of tea, her nails painted red like fire. “I sure loved the way he played that sax.”
    Dad smiled. “Yes, Eddie was there. His was the first face I saw when we walked into the room. That's how I knew something was wrong. He pulled me aside and told me the owner of the club, Mr. Casey, was going to put a rope down the center of the dance floor to separate the whites and Negroes.”
    “What year was that, Saunders?” Mom liked to know numbers.
    “Let's see.” Dad whistled. “1944, 1945.” His eyes trailed off, and then settled on me. “You took your life in your hands going down South for any reason. That's why my mother and father left Louisiana. I would rather raise Cain than take a backseat because of my race. They had to give it to me right, or not at all.”
    Aunt Nita sat down at the end of the table. “What did you do, Saunders?” She made her eyes bug out as she did when Dad sang her favorite songs, and big tears plopped into her martini.“My manager was still back at the hotel and I was too hot to