When You Dance With the Devil

by Gwynne Forster

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Essence best-selling author Gwynne Forster writes thought-provoking tales of love and personal growth. In When You Dance with the Devil, Forster explores the complicated lives of two lost souls looking to start over at a Maryland boarding house. Fannie Johnson has seen darn near all the world has to offer at her Thank the Lord Boarding House. After spending 35 years under the thumb of her vindictive mother, Sarah Jolene Tilman is ready to strike out on her own. In stark contrast, Richard Peterson has done more than his share of living and is looking for simpler pleasures. Under Fannie’s watchful eye, each will embark on paths of self-exploration—and find that life is nothing if not a wildly unpredictable journey. Forster continues to delight fans with her tender treatment of personal relationships.
“... accomplished prose that challenges us to think, feel, and imagine.”—Robert Fleming, author of The African American Writer’s Handbook

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

In the darkening mist of that cold December afternoon, Sara Jolene Tilman stared down at her mother, reposing peacefully amidst red and yellow carnations—flowers suggestive of joy rather than sorrow—and whispered, “Yes, Mama.” She had avoided burying her mother beneath a blanket of white flowers for, to her, white symbolized purity, and nothing—not even death—would lead her to link Emma Tilman with purity. To her mind, meanness was incompatible with purity, and meanness was the one word that, since her early childhood, she had always associated with her mother.

“Yes, Mama,” she said, almost sneering, turned away dry-eyed, and left Emma Tilman to the undertaker and grave tenders.

Sara, do this and Sara, do that. Sara, bring me this. Pick up that. Sara, come here. Sara, go there. Commands that she would never hear again, and that she would not miss.

From the little she had seen of other children with their mothers—so little because Emma did not allow her to visit other children—kindness was the least she should have received from Emma Tilman. Kindness? She pulled cold air through her teeth. If Emma had ever smiled at her, Sara Jolene had not been looking. But Emma had been adept at mental torture. She didn’t engage in abuse, at least not the kind that bruised the skin; she used her tongue to inflict the punishment.

“You’re not worth the lard that goes into the biscuits you eat,” Emma would say when Sara Jolene asked her mother for shoes or other basic necessities. “You’re useless.” She would never forget the times when, in one of her frequent rages, Emma would scream at her. “Go hide your ugly face. I wish I had never seen your daddy. I couldn’t even abort you, hard as I tried.” Maybe now, the hatred and resentment she felt for her mother would cease hammering at her head, like daylong migraines, and churning in her chest like acid reflux.

Tears? She had no tears for Emma Tilman. For five long years she had nursed and cared for her bedridden mother, and not one word of thanks, not one gesture of appreciation. But as she stumbled away from the grave, she dabbed at the brine dripping from beneath her eyelids, blinding her as she walked. The tears that finally streamed from her eyes were tears not of mourning but of relief, and tears for the dark unknown that lay ahead of her.

Sara Jolene was not afraid. The hard life she’d lived had inured her to anxiety about possible calamities. Before her mother’s seemingly interminable illness, for six terrible years she’d had the burden of caring for her stroke-bound and bed-ridden maternal grandmother, a woman every bit as domineering, mean, and lacking in feeling and warmth as Emma Tilman.

She threaded her way past tombstones and crosses, over ground hardened by Hagerstown, Maryland’s icy winter, struggling with her shoulders hunched forward until she reached the black Cadillac where her mother’s pastor detained her.

He grasped her upper arm. “I’m truly sorry, Sara Jolene. I know this has been difficult for you.”

Sorry about what? Neither he nor his parishioners had done a thing to ease the burden she’d struggled under all those years. She looked over toward the small group of people walking down the hill and raised her hand in a weak wave at the seven individuals who had cared enough to tell her mother—a woman without friends—goodbye. “I’m no worse right now, Reverend Coles, than I ever was. This is just different.”

“But you’re all alone now.”

“Wasn’t I always alone?” She attempted to move on, but he detained her.

“I know. You can make a fresh start now, if you will. Move to another town and do something with your life. If you don’t get out of that old house, you’ll waste away, a bitter woman like your mother and your grandmother.” She watched as he wrote a few lines on a card and handed it to her. “My sister has a place on the Atlantic Ocean not too far from Ocean City. You can make a living over there. Just tell her I sent you.”

She looked at the card before slipping it into her pocketbook. “Thank you, sir. I may need it.”

“Use it,” he called after her, “and be careful, now.”

Careful, huh? He didn’t have to worry about that. From now on, she was looking after number one.

She walked into the house, turned on the hall light and closed the door behind her. Maybe the preacher was right. She had no reason to remain in Hagerstown. When she hung up her coat, the cold seeped into her. She started to her room, shivering, to get a sweater and remembered that there was no one to tell her she couldn’t turn up the heat. As the room warmed, she walked through the house turning on all the lights, banishing what seemed to her like eons of darkness. Then she turned on the radio, unable to remember when she had last heard music in that house. Laughter poured out of her until, in tears, she collapsed into a dining room chair.

“Don’t you want to keep some souvenirs of your mother?” the real estate agent asked Sara Jolene three months later when she sold the house with everything in it except her clothes.

“You’d be surprised at the souvenirs I have,” she said, ignoring his quizzical expression. “I wish I could give you the memories that go along with the house.”

“Too bad. Where can I reach you if I have any problems?”

She stared at him. “What kind of problems you expecting? We just closed the deal. I got my money and that’s all I want from you.” At his expression of surprise, she added. “And my house is all you’re getting from me.”

“Why, Miss Tilman, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Everybody knows I’m on my own for the first time, but maybe y’all don’t know that I’m not dancing to anybody’s tune but mine. When they buried mama, they threw dirt on the last person who’s going to exploit me. I’ve met all the conditions of sale. The house is broom clean. I had the chimneys swept, new locks put on the doors and the back steps repaired. So, mister, you don’t need to get in touch with me for a frigging thing. My business with you is finished.”

If he thought her fair game, she’d show him. She knew people believed her to be timid, even cowardly, but she wasn’t; she was Emma Tilman’s unwilling victim. Not even the local sheriff stood up to her mother, and Emma got off scot-free when, in anger, she’d dashed hot water on a neighbor, leaving the woman permanently scarred.

The preacher’s car approached, and she was certain that he would continue on, wherever he started, but he parked in front of the house she’d just sold. She walked toward him.

“I just closed the sale at the bank this morning. Your sister is expecting me tomorrow, sir.”

“Yes. She called to tell me. I’m glad you decided to go there. I don’t think you’ll be sorry. God bless you.” His gaze roamed over her for a second, and then he started the engine and drove away. She wondered at his interest. He visited her mother only to bring communion once every three months, and hadn’t visited but once, for a short while, during her last days. Well, few people had seemed able to tolerate her mother’s company. And who could blame them? She quickened her steps and headed for the inn where she would spend the night and where she’d left her few belongings.

Thirty-five years and not a thing to show for them. Well, that’s all in the past. Tomorrow, I’ll start finding out what life is really like.

The following afternoon, Sara Jolene opened the back door of the taxi, went around to the trunk and unloaded her three suitcases and two shopping bags. Then, she went to the driver’s side of the taxi and gave the man sixteen dollars and eighty cents, the amount on the taxi meter.

“Don’t you people tip?” he asked, his face red with anger and his blue eyes flashing with what she didn’t doubt was scorn.

“We tip when you people get off your behinds and earn it,” she said, looking directly into his face, a face mottled with fury. “I’m not paying you to sit on your behind while I lug these heavy suitcases from the trunk of your taxi. Being black doesn’t mean being stupid.” Lord, how good it felt to speak her mind. She was through with “yessing” people.

A tall, brown-skinned woman with large brown eyes, a pointed nose and pouting bottom lip, Sara Jolene wore arrogance easily, though she wouldn’t have defined her attitude as such. Her good looks had never interested her; any effort she’d made on her own behalf had been directed toward the simple matter of existing. With her mama gone, she easily found avenues for her lifelong resentment.

When the taxi driver drove off with a powerful burst of energy and speed, Sara Jolene had a feeling of immense satisfaction because she had infuriated the man. Looking up at the big white wooden structure, its green shutters gleaming as if they had all been painted that morning, and at the white rocking chairs scattered along the front porch beckoning like the “house by the side of the road,” a shiver or two shot through her body. Undaunted, she picked up the heaviest suitcase and started up the walk. The front door opened, and a stocky African-American man of about thirty rushed out to meet her.

“Afternoon, ma’am. I’m Rodger. Miss Johnson is expecting you. I’ll get your things up to your room.”

“Thank you, Rodger. You’d a thought that taxi driver would at least have taken my things out of the trunk for me.”

“No, ma’am. I wouldn’t. They take your money, but they sure don’t do much for it. You go on in. I’ll look after this.”

She wanted to ask Rodger who he was and what he did at the Thank the Lord Boarding House, but the bite of her mother’s tongue had taught her that it was best not to ask questions.

A matronly woman about five feet, six inches tall who bore no resemblance to the Reverend Philip Coles met her at the front door. “Welcome, Miss Tilman. I’m Fannie Johnson. Your room’s right at the top of the stairs, and it’s on the front. Course, if you want to face the bay, it’s fifty dollars more per month.”

She imagined Fannie Johnson’s age to be somewhere between fifty and sixty, although her prudish appearance might have added more years than she had earned.

Sara Jolene stared at the woman, wondering if she was going to like her. “I don’t have fifty dollars to throw away. I’ll take the front room.”

“Come on. After I show you your room, I’ll get you a sandwich. You must be tired and hungry after your trip. I sure hope you’re not a vegetarian. And no smoking. If you do, you’ll be responsible for cleaning your own room and bath. No liquor in public rooms, other than wine with dinner at the table, if you want it, and no bad language. No men in your bedroom, but they can visit you in the lounge, and if you want to invite a guest for dinner, it’ll cost you ten dollars. Try to get along with the other residents. We’re a happy family. If you get sick, we’ll take good care of you. Breakfast at seven-thirty, lunch at one, but let the cook know you’ll be taking it, and supper at seven. As of now, there are no roaches and no bedbugs in this house. I hope you didn’t bring any.”

What a mouth! Sara Jolene looked hard at the woman, deciding whether to be insulted and tell her off or to bide her time and see whether she wanted to stay. She did neither. “Miss Johnson, I just buried my mother. For thirty-five years, I did as she commanded. When I left her grave, I vowed never to let anybody else treat me as if I’m a child. I’d appreciate a sandwich and your apology. Thank you.”

“No point in—”

“I’m not unpacking till you apologize for that crack about the roaches and bed bugs.”

“Oh, all right. I’m a Christian woman, and I believe in peace. I apologize, and I’m glad to have you with us. Baked ham or turkey in your sandwich?”

Sara Jolene could feel her bottom lip drop. The woman could switch gears like a racing car driver. “Ham, please.”

“It’ll be on the dining room table in ten minutes.” She started from the room, turned, walked back to Sara Jolene and put an arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mother. May the Lord let her rest in peace.”

Unaccustomed to such gestures, Sara Jolene flinched at the woman’s touch. “Not a chance,” she muttered, and Fannie’s eyebrows shot up.

Then, Fannie lifted her right shoulder in a long shrug. “Well . . . uh, what do you want us to call you? We use first names. I’m Fannie.”

“My name’s Sara Jolene, but I . . . uh . . . like to be called Jolene.” She hoped she never heard the name Sara again. “This is a huge house, Fannie. How many boarders live here?”

“Ten with you, and I have one vacancy. When I’m full, there’re twelve of us living here.”

“Twelve. I hope I don’t go out of my mind.”

“You won’t. You’ll find them very friendly. The Lord put us all here together for a purpose. Just let him do his work, and you’ll be happy.”

As she watched Fannie trip down the stairs, Jolene couldn’t help wondering if the Lord was doing his work all those years when first her grandmother and then her mother abused her continuously as if doing so was their right. She doubted it. What she didn’t doubt was that, from then on, she was going to get some of her own and if that meant stepping on a few innocent toes, so be it.

She unpacked, shook out her clothes, and put them away. With pale yellow walls, white curtains and bed-spread, and two comfortable over-stuffed chairs upholstered in pale yellow, the room appealed to Jolene, especially its cheerful and sunny appearance; it was a drastic change from the house in which she spent her first thirty-five years. When she went to wash her hands, she discovered that her bathroom was also yellow and white. She hurried down to the dining room where the sandwich, a glass of iced tea and an apple rested in the middle of a place setting. She blinked back the tears. At last, somebody had done something for her.

After she finished eating, Jolene took the dishes to the kitchen, where she encountered a surprised cook. “You don’t have to bus your dishes, honey,” the woman said. “You start doing that, and Miss Fannie may decide she don’t need some of the help. My name is Marilyn, and I’m the chief cook.”

“Uh, sorry. I’m Jolene. It may take me a while to figure out how things work around here.”

Marilyn stuck her right hand on her enormous right hip. “Ain’t nothing to figure out. Just come to your meals on time, don’t smoke, stay sober, and don’t take your man to your room. If you can remember that, you’ll be the apple of Miss Fannie’s eye.”

With no chores to do for the first time in memory and no commands to follow, Jolene wandered into the lounge where an older man and two women sat watching television. She hadn’t ever watched an entire television show. She had rarely visited anyone, and Emma hadn’t seen the need for a television nor had Emma’s mother. Jolene sat in a chair some distance from the other boarders and watched. Fascinated.

“Judge Mathis is just leading that woman on, letting her hang herself,” one woman said.

“He sure is,” the old man said. “He’s laughing and joking, and she’s just digging her grave. But if you don’t know the difference between virtue and immorality, and if you’re so involved with yourself that you don’t care, you get what the judge is about to lay on that woman.”

“Come on, Judd,” the woman replied, “it’s just a television show.”

Judd leaned back in the shaker rocker—the only one in the lounge and the seat that, by tacit consent, belonged to him. “It may be a TV show, but that woman is being her real self, arrogant and self-absorbed. I’m glad she’s there and not here.”

Jolene stood and headed for the door. “Is she the new one?” Jolene heard one of the women ask.

“Looks like it. She sure could use a little manners. Walk in here and don’t say a word. Get up and leave just like she came. A dog would at least have wagged his tail.”

Jolene realized they were talking about her, and wanted a place to hide. From the corner of her eye, she saw the old man and two women who she presumed to be the house gossips. The thin, pursed lips of one woman reminded her of her mama’s attitude toward the rest of the world. “I’m not going to like that one,” she said to herself. She dashed up to her room, closed the door, and let it take her weight. What did they want from her? She didn’t know them.

By supper time, she had become well acquainted with the view from her window. The park that faced her, a wide open space with scattered trees, a pond, flowers, a narrow, river-like stream that was host to a small bridge. And she could see the edge of the bay. It was a place where a person could be free to embrace the world.

“Don’t be so fanciful,” she admonished herself as twilight set in and, in the distance, she could see fireflies and hear croaking bullfrogs. “It looks good, but it may turn out to be like everything else: something to sap your will, eat up your energy, and consume you. I’m not getting attached to anybody or anything.”

She dreaded supper, for it meant meeting ten strangers, and after having seen three of them in the lounge, she’d as soon eat her food in her room. But that wasn’t an option, so she washed her face and hands, added a lip gloss, combed out her hair—mama had insisted that she braid it or wear it in a knot at the back of her head—and trod down the stairs. The laughter and talking reached her before she got to the bottom step. After a deep breath, she laid her shoulders back and headed for the dining room. At the door, she saw an empty seat at one table, judged that to be her only option, and took it.

Total quiet ensued, and she gazed at the empty plate before her, certain that all ten of the boarders were staring at her. But when Fannie finished saying grace, the chatter resumed.

“That’s my biscuit, Miss,” a man beside her said. “Yours are over there on the left where your fork is.”

Heat flushed her face and neck. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“Oh, that’s all right. Where’re you from?”

“Hagerstown.”

“That’s a nice city. How long you staying?”

“I don’t know.”

“My name’s Joe Tucker. What’s yours?”

“Jolene,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear it. Joe turned his attention to Judd Walker, who she’d seen in the lounge that afternoon. What kind of man slicked his hair with conkaline? Her mama would have dismissed as worthless any black man who straightened his hair. She glanced at Joe’s fingernails and wondered; they looked like the work of a manicurist. He was a big man, too, she mused, at least six feet four inches tall, and wearing a red corduroy shirt, at that. She shook her head from side to side. “Mama always said, ‘It takes all kinds,’ and maybe it does.” She concentrated on her plate.

At least the food was tasty, Jolene thought and, even if it hadn’t been, at least she didn’t have to cook it. She focused on the food and didn’t allow her gaze to meet anyone else’s. As soon as she finished the strawberry shortcake, she left the table with the intention of escaping to her room. However, she remembered having seen newspapers in the lounge and went there to get one.

“Where’re you going?” Fannie asked, effectively waylaying her. “We all sit here in the lounge after supper and have coffee or tea and watch the reality shows.”

“Well . . . I’ve, uh . . . had a long day and—”

Fannie’s knotted right fist went to her hip. “Listen, Jolene, if you’re going to stay here with us, you must try to be friendlier. You walked in tonight and didn’t say hello or anything else, and then you walked out without saying excuse me, good night, cat, dog or pig. And Jolene, please don’t blot your lipstick with my napkins. It’s hard to get it out.”

Jolene’s stomach began to churn the way it had when her mother berated her. She swallowed the liquid that accumulated in her mouth and reminded herself that Emma Tilman was gone.

“If I’ve done something to offend you, Fannie, please find a better way to let me know.” She reached down, scooped up the newspaper and headed up the stairs. Nobody is going to tongue lash me, and if Fannie tries it again, she’ll find out what it’s like. She hadn’t remembered that the napkins were linen because her mama used paper napkins, and she’d wiped her mouth automatically. Embroiled in misery, Jolene sat on the edge of the bed, holding her belly with both hands and rocking herself. She didn’t remember having eaten in the company of that many people before. What was she supposed to do and say? It had required all the courage she could summon just to walk to that chair and sit down. She took out her tablet and made some notes. If I have to learn how other people live, she said to herself, I’d better start now.

Thousands of miles away in Geneva, Switzerland, Richard Peterson sat alone in his elegant wood-paneled office eating lunch at a mahogany desk that sprawled across more than one-quarter of his thirty-foot-wide office. Alone and staring at Mont Blanc, a rare picture-perfect vision on a brilliant sunny day. Alone in the flesh and alone in the spirit. Although born in Brooklyn near the bottom of the heap, by the age of forty-five, tall, handsome, and polished, Richard had scaled the top. However, on the way to becoming an ambassador and, subsequently, executive-director of one of the largest and most prestigious nongovernmental organizations, he ruthlessly trampled his competitors, ignored underlings who needed his help, and used women for his own ends without regard to their feelings or needs. He also became a snob, a trim, six-foot-four-inch, good-looking and flawlessly dressed snob.

Richard recognized the justice of his own tragedy: a powerful man with no interest in or will to use his power. He glanced at the copy of the New York Daily News that his secretary placed beside his luncheon tray and saw the notice of Estelle Mitchell’s marriage. The account merely confirmed what he had known for months: she was lost to him forever. He stopped eating, leaned back in his swivel desk chair, and made a pyramid of his fingers.

Hadn’t he brought it on himself with his craftiness, his insistence on treating her as he had all other women, as a person undeserving of his integrity, a woman to be used? This, in spite of the fact that she was his equal in status and position. But Estelle Mitchell had not succumbed to his charm, nor was she bamboozled by his lovemaking, and it was she with whom he had fallen in love—and too late to correct his behavior. She wanted no part of him.

“Come in.” He sat up straight, brushed his fingers through his semi-straight curls and angled his square-jawed face toward the door.

“Mr. Pichat from France is here to see you sir. He has a two o’clock appointment,” Marlene Gupp, his secretary, said.

He wiped his mouth with the white linen napkin, and gestured toward the tray. “Would you remove this, please, Marlene? What does Pichat want? I don’t remember.”

Her eyebrows shot up in an expression of disbelief that he had witnessed often in recent weeks. “Sir, it’s about our contribution to the five-year plan.”

“Yes, of course.”

He didn’t see how he could continue the façade, the superficiality, the automatic grins and empty smiles, the shallow women. He no longer cared about the job. He dealt with important world problems that deserved more able attention than he or his cohorts were bringing to it. Oh, what the hell! It wasn’t working, and he wanted out. Maybe he would regret it, but he was tired of it all. And to think of the things he’d done in order to sit in that chair, eat at that desk and see Mont Blanc from that window. He’d give anything if . . . He couldn’t tolerate the man he had become.

He pasted a smile on his face and stood when Yves Pichat entered. “This is a pleasure, my friend,” he said. “Would you like coffee, a glass of Chablis or something stronger?” More shamming. He’d done it so long and so well that he wasn’t sure who he was.

Pichat took a seat. “Chablis would be fine. My wife wants to go to the Caribbean before it gets too warm, and you were ambassador to Jamaica. Where should she go and what should she take along?”

Wasn’t it always the same? Important men in important jobs running errands for their wives when they should be working to relieve the world’s poor. He let a grin expose his white teeth. “How’s Michelle? I’ve got some fliers and brochures here that ought to do the trick.” He opened the bottom desk drawer, gave the man the material and prayed that he would be satisfied and leave.

“I presume you’ve accepted the invitation to our official reception for the prime minister? If you’re not there, the single women will want Michelle’s head. Some of the married ones, too, I imagine.”

Richard lifted his right shoulder and let it fall in a show of diffidence. “You give me too much credit, man.”

Pichat left without mentioning the five-year plan or waiting for his Chablis. The man’s visit reminded Richard of the reasons he had begun to alter his way of life. Sick of its shallowness, he had begun to reject the high social life that he had once relished, indeed thrived on, to eat his lunch alone at his desk and to confine social interaction to what the job required. He stood at a precipice looking down at the great unknown, his life’s great divide into periods BE and AE, the era before Estelle rejected him and the period after she walked out of his life for good. A watershed, and he had to live with it. If he had known the price would be so high, would he have lived differently? He thought so.

“What do you mean, you aren’t going to seek reelection?” The executive-director of a sister nongovernmental organization asked Richard as they strolled along the banks of Lac Leman one March evening at sunset.

“Just that. I’ve had enough. I’m going back to the states.”

“Hmm. Wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain assistant S-G in New York, would it?”

“Only indirectly. She’s in the past.”

“Yes. I know. Where’re you planning to settle?”

“A small town somewhere, preferably near the ocean or at least near a large lake or big river. I need to live near the water.”

“I know just the place. It’s a small town in Maryland right on the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve vacationed there a couple of times, and when I retire I’m going to settle there.” He wrote something on a card and handed it to Richard. “Don’t let the name fool you. It’s a great place if you don’t want your own house or apartment.”

“May be just what I’m looking for. Thanks, friend.”

Lean, fit, and self-confident, as usual, Richard stepped out of the taxi—a bedraggled vehicle that had seen better days—and looked up at the big white green-shuttered house before him. If he got back in that automobile and headed for the luxury he knew he. . .