Selena Kitt - Grace

“Well… I don’t understand why the news isn’t covering this…”

“They are.” Clay slowed again, tossed another paper. “They’re spinning it all into nice little bits and bites for the whites to swallow so they can feel better about driving down Hastings street after dark. They’re using federal urban renewal dollars to eliminate the only housing blacks are allowed to live in, and they’re doing nothing to build any more. In fact, they’re going to build a freeway instead.”

“Where will everyone go?”

“Good question. I wasn’t kidding when I said that we’re not far from the race riots we saw back in forty-three.”

“Clay, you were, like, fourteen…” Erica didn’t remember the incident very well. Her mother had been sick at the time and they’d been well insulated in their big house on the river. It had all started out on Belle Isle in a traffic jam, and rumors flew about a white woman being raped, and a black mother and child being thrown off the bridge, neither of which were true but which spurred the biggest race riots Detroit had seen.

“I was at Belle Isle that day.” He threw the last paper, hitting not just the stoop this time, but the door beyond it. “We were in a traffic jam on the Belle Isle Bridge. It was hot and everyone was irritable. There was a little black kid in the car next to ours. He was just goofing around, you know, like kids do, making faces at the other cars?”

Erica felt her heart drop to her middle when Clay whipped the car around the corner, pulling it to the curb and looking over at her in the darkness. He turned toward her, his breathing shallow and sharp as he told her his story.

“Four guys got out of their car behind us. White kids, probably just old enough to drive. They grabbed that little boy out of the car and beat him up right there in front of his mother.”

“Oh my god.”

“And no one did anything. His mother screamed and called for help and got a fat lip herself trying to get those boys to stop. And no one did anything .”

“Oh Clay…” Erica reached out, putting her hand over his. “I’m so sorry…”

“I didn’t do anything either.” He swallowed, the clicking sound in his throat huge in the darkness. “I asked my dad-he was driving, and my mom was sitting in the passenger seat, we’d just gone to Belle Isle for the day because I’d begged them to take me-I asked him, ‘Shouldn’t we do something? Dad, shouldn’t we?’”

Clay’s voice cracked and Erica felt tears stinging her eyes, imagining it.

“And he told me, ‘Son, you don’t step into trouble like that if it isn’t yours. Just look away.’”

“What did you do?”

Clay put the car into gear, pulling away from the curb and popping on his headlights. “I looked away. Like you said, I was just fourteen. What was I supposed to do?”

“Did anything happen to you? How did you get home?”

Clay stopped at a red light and Erica glanced up, seeing a crowd of colored people crossing the street. She sank down in her seat without even thinking about it and Clay looked over at her and laughed.

“You’ve lived in this city your whole life. What are you afraid of?”

Erica straightened in her seat, crossing her arms and frowning at him. “Nothing. I was just… getting more comfortable.”

“Sure.” Clay chuckled, giving the car a hard shot of gas as he pulled away when the light turned green. “You ever been to the Blue Haven?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll show you.” Clay pulled around the corner and parked the car in a dimly lit lot. The music emanating from the back of the building made the ground tremble beneath Erica’s feet. The street was cobblestone and she followed behind Clay as they went around to the front.

“Welcome to Black Bottom,” Clay whispered into her ear as he reached for the door handle of the Blue Haven. The neon sign above the entrance told her that much. A blackboard out front had Sonnyboy Williamson Appearing All Week written in chalk. “The cops won’t even come down here.”

“Okay, now I’m scared.” She grabbed for his hand as he opened the door, the music blasting them both.

“Don’t be. I’m here.” He grinned and pulled her in. “Everyone knows everyone on Hastings Street.”

“Do they know you?”

“Yeah, they know me.” Clay waved to the woman tending bar. She dropped him a slow wink and raised her painted-on eyebrows at Erica trailing behind him in the smoke-filled haze of the darkened bar. There was a band playing up front and lots of crammed in tables filled with patrons slapping their knees and rocking along. They were the only white people in the place.

Clay pulled out a chair for her at a two-person table near the wall and she quickly sat in it, hoping she might blend right into it. Clay looked like he was enjoying himself, more at her expense than anything else.

“This whole street was jumping in the heyday,” he said over the music. “It’s dying now. They’re killing it with a freeway.”

“Getcha?” The waitress appeared with a pad and a pen and a skirt so short it made Erica blush.

“Two beers. Schlitz.” Clay pulled out his wallet, handing over two dollars. The waitress eyeballed Erica, looking like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. She just took Clay’s money and came back with two glasses from the tap, putting them on the table.

Erica wasn’t quite old enough to drink, and she was pretty sure Clay wasn’t either, but they sat at the table and drank beer and talked and no one came over and bothered them or told them to leave.

“We can go in their stores and clubs. But they’re not allowed in ours. Why is that, do you think?” Clay wondered out loud. He leaned forward in his chair toward her and she could smell the beer on his breath. “You know the KKK is alive and well in Detroit, don’t you? Some of our city council members still wear white after Labor Day.”

“Shhh!” Erica glanced around. “You can’t say that in here!”

“Do you think black people don’t know about the KKK?”

“Clay! Hush!”

“Got a sweet home Tennessee born girl like me here to sing the blues and steal your heart,” said the man at the mic. “Please welcome Miss Aretha Franklin.”

The young girl that stepped up onto the stage barely reached the microphone. She had big, dark wet eyes and her hair was wrapped around her head like a small, black beehive.

“She’s not even old enough to be in here,” Erica whispered.

“You’re right.” Clay squinted at the stage as the music started. “That’s the little girl who sings at the New Bethel Church. She’s the pastor’s daughter. I don’t think she’s quite fourteen. What’s she doing here at one in the morning?”

She might have looked small, but when the girl opened her mouth and began to sing the whole place went up in a stunned cheer. How could such a powerful voice be coming from that little bit of a girl? Erica met Clay’s eyes, both of them staring, open mouthed and too stunned to speak.

It was an old gospel song, with Sonnyboy’s soulful blues harp wailing behind, but he couldn’t compete with the girl’s voice. Just when they thought she couldn’t take them any higher, or push her voice any lower, just when they thought she was done toying with them like a cat with its paw on a mouse’s tail, she would come back even harder and knock the whole place on its behind.

She only did three songs, and Erica leaned over to say, “It’s past her bedtime!” to Clay, who laughed, still clapping and whistling in the wake of the young girl’s performance. Sonnyboy picked it up again, knocking his music out of the park. Erica had never listened to much blues, although she recognized the sound. Her father’s gallery had done a whole show on the roots of rock n roll, tracing it back to the Delta blues.