Read Online My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tananarive Due
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whatever it was.
Bea Jacobs had fixed baked chicken, collard greens, cornbread, and two desserts, a sweet potato pie and a lemon pound cake. Jessica was amused by her mother’s sudden culinary finesse. She’d never cooked this way for the family before, but she started in earnest after Kira was born, assuming a grandmother’s role, and Uncle Billy had passed along some down-home Georgia recipes since he moved in, like peach cobbler and chicken feet stew. Bea was a neurotic cook, obsessed with kitchen details the way she’d fretted over the books before she retired as business manager of a chain of beauty shops. Like her daughters, she was a perfectionist. And she caught on fast.
“Where’s David?” Bea asked, pulling her chair up to the head of the table after setting down the plate of cornbread. She’d always been thin, and she wore her hair in a silver natural, cut short the way Alexis wore hers. Only Jessica relaxed her hair, letting it grow in a straight page-boy style just past her ears.
“He’s washing up,” Jessica answered.
“Let’s go on and say grace, then.”
In a clash of wills with his in-law, David had once made a production of refusing to sit through grace at her table. Jessica thought her mother would bite through her lip, she was so angry. All things considered, Jessica thought with a smile, Bea was adjusting well to having a heathen in the family; both her father and grandfather had been pastors.
They grasped hands; Bea taking Jessica and Alexis’s hands on either side of her, Jessica holding Kira’s tiny fingers, and Alexis reaching over to Uncle Billy’s wheelchair to touch his ruined left hand. Uncle Billy still couldn’t move his left arm since his stroke. They murmured their amens in unison.
“You finished fooling with that car yet? I got something you need to listen to in back,” Uncle Billy said when David joined them at the table. He’d dressed again and smelled of fresh cologne. The scent, whatever he’d found, suited him.
“Don’t tell me you rooted out that old Jelly Roll record.”
“Told you I had it somewhere up in all them boxes. Original recording, nineteen and twenty-five. Got me some Satchmo too.” Uncle Billy’s words slurred slightly, the stroke compounded by missing front teeth and a heavy Georgia accent. Sometimes Jessica couldn’t understand him, but David never had a problem. A relative from Bea’s mother’s side, Uncle Billy had been born near the grounds of the same plantation where the family had been slaves for years.
“I’ll be damned, Uncle Billy,” David said, smiling. “I may just have to sneak in here one night and steal those away. And that old Victrola of yours too.”
“Oh, no. You ain’t stealin’ nothin’ from this old man. And I’ma still find that Jazz Brigade recording. My daddy left me that from when we was in Chicago, right ‘fore the Depression. He used to watch those boys rehearse. Said they could cook. Seth ‘Spider’ Tillis, Lester Payne, all of them.”
Something like rapture passed across David’s face. He loved music. Whatever shelf space on their walls and in the closets that wasn’t filled with books was dedicated to his vast record and CD collection, exclusively classical, blues, and jazz. He’d once told her that his CD collection alone numbered more than four thousand. But it was much more than a hobby to him; the New York Times had called David’s book on the early jazz age, which he’d written at Harvard as his doctoral dissertation, the “definitive history of jazz.”
David leaned closer to Uncle Billy, his chin resting on his palm. “Uncle Billy,” he said slowly, “if you could find The Jazz Brigade … I lost all my originals. And it’s so rare—”
“What’s the … Depression?” Kira piped up.
David tapped her on top of her head. “It was a long time ago, Duchess. Many years before any of us were born.”
“Now, hold up. I was born nineteen-seventeen,” Uncle Billy
Bea Jacobs had fixed baked chicken, collard greens, cornbread, and two desserts, a sweet potato pie and a lemon pound cake. Jessica was amused by her mother’s sudden culinary finesse. She’d never cooked this way for the family before, but she started in earnest after Kira was born, assuming a grandmother’s role, and Uncle Billy had passed along some down-home Georgia recipes since he moved in, like peach cobbler and chicken feet stew. Bea was a neurotic cook, obsessed with kitchen details the way she’d fretted over the books before she retired as business manager of a chain of beauty shops. Like her daughters, she was a perfectionist. And she caught on fast.
“Where’s David?” Bea asked, pulling her chair up to the head of the table after setting down the plate of cornbread. She’d always been thin, and she wore her hair in a silver natural, cut short the way Alexis wore hers. Only Jessica relaxed her hair, letting it grow in a straight page-boy style just past her ears.
“He’s washing up,” Jessica answered.
“Let’s go on and say grace, then.”
In a clash of wills with his in-law, David had once made a production of refusing to sit through grace at her table. Jessica thought her mother would bite through her lip, she was so angry. All things considered, Jessica thought with a smile, Bea was adjusting well to having a heathen in the family; both her father and grandfather had been pastors.
They grasped hands; Bea taking Jessica and Alexis’s hands on either side of her, Jessica holding Kira’s tiny fingers, and Alexis reaching over to Uncle Billy’s wheelchair to touch his ruined left hand. Uncle Billy still couldn’t move his left arm since his stroke. They murmured their amens in unison.
“You finished fooling with that car yet? I got something you need to listen to in back,” Uncle Billy said when David joined them at the table. He’d dressed again and smelled of fresh cologne. The scent, whatever he’d found, suited him.
“Don’t tell me you rooted out that old Jelly Roll record.”
“Told you I had it somewhere up in all them boxes. Original recording, nineteen and twenty-five. Got me some Satchmo too.” Uncle Billy’s words slurred slightly, the stroke compounded by missing front teeth and a heavy Georgia accent. Sometimes Jessica couldn’t understand him, but David never had a problem. A relative from Bea’s mother’s side, Uncle Billy had been born near the grounds of the same plantation where the family had been slaves for years.
“I’ll be damned, Uncle Billy,” David said, smiling. “I may just have to sneak in here one night and steal those away. And that old Victrola of yours too.”
“Oh, no. You ain’t stealin’ nothin’ from this old man. And I’ma still find that Jazz Brigade recording. My daddy left me that from when we was in Chicago, right ‘fore the Depression. He used to watch those boys rehearse. Said they could cook. Seth ‘Spider’ Tillis, Lester Payne, all of them.”
Something like rapture passed across David’s face. He loved music. Whatever shelf space on their walls and in the closets that wasn’t filled with books was dedicated to his vast record and CD collection, exclusively classical, blues, and jazz. He’d once told her that his CD collection alone numbered more than four thousand. But it was much more than a hobby to him; the New York Times had called David’s book on the early jazz age, which he’d written at Harvard as his doctoral dissertation, the “definitive history of jazz.”
David leaned closer to Uncle Billy, his chin resting on his palm. “Uncle Billy,” he said slowly, “if you could find The Jazz Brigade … I lost all my originals. And it’s so rare—”
“What’s the … Depression?” Kira piped up.
David tapped her on top of her head. “It was a long time ago, Duchess. Many years before any of us were born.”
“Now, hold up. I was born nineteen-seventeen,” Uncle Billy
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