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Great Writing - Home > Short S. > Beulah-Mae in Paris 1932
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| Beulah-Mae in Paris 1932 | |
| By eudimonia | ||||||||||||
| 30 January 2008 | ||||||||||||
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The last unfinished sentence is the end of the piece. This might be part of a longer short story. Please be nice! I had never thought that I would see the Eiffel Tower. My uncle Clyde had bought a pretty silver statuette back from the war in 1918. Occasionally my Grandma Wilson would let me take it down from the shelf above her bed where it stood next to Jesus with his bleeding heart. I was unprepared for the reality, up close it was a monstrosity to me. In the oppressive august heat I felt dizzy as I looked up and up and up. I was with three guys from my band; long, skinny Leonard, squat, muscle-man Sticks and Sam, my man Sam, slight in stature (on account of having polio as a child) but big of heart and temper. ''It's over 1000 feet high, a marvel of engineering!" Leonard was babbling on excitedly. Young Leonard was from Licks County, Georgia, prior to these last few months I reckon the biggest building he'd ever seen was the Mount Zion Baptist Church. "I worked on the skyscrapers in Chicago, looks like the skeleton of a building to me." Sticks spoke dismissively. "T'ain't as big as the new Chrysler building." Sam too sounded unimpressed, he had the confidence of a man who'd seen the world. Sam had been to Paris before in '28 with the Juke Joint Jazz Band. "Just like the French to leave it naked!" Leonard whooped. The rest of us ignored him, the only time he shut up was when he played his trumpet, though there was no denying that for a kid of twenty he could play that trumpet. A skeleton. I shuddered. I had once seen a photograph of a dinosaur skeleton in a museum. I imagined the tower lifting up its massive legs and stomping across the elegant boulevards of Paris, swinging its long neck down to pick off people from the pavement cafes. I sat down on a low wall and closed my eyes. My nerves were soothed by the clean scent of plane trees and the whispers of a small fountain. Gravel crunched underfoot and I thought of the gravel pits I had swum in as a child. I was so homesick I felt like crying. Sam sat down next to me. "Beulah-Mae, is your momma sick?" he asked quietly, twisting his big, gold wedding ring in an absent-minded fashion. I caught my breath. Had he heard me in the bathroom the last two mornings? is your momma sick meant, are you pregnant? I didn't know. I was just nineteen. I didn't know for sure. "I'm fine, just fine, it's just the sun's so bright." I stood up too quickly, my head span. I focused on some big red flowers on a bush, their intensity of colour and over-ripe perfume reminded me of the women who hung around outside our cheap hotel in Montmartre. I hated the way they called suggestively to the boys and jeered at me in French. "Come on now Beulah-Mae, Let's get up there! They got an elevator goes right up to the top." Leonard called back over his shoulder, kicking up a spray of gravel as he set off excitedly. "I wonder how much iron they got in that tower," drawled Sticks. He'd been drinking all morning, he staggered slightly as he tried to stroll after Leonard. "Looks like enough to lay a railroad clean across Mississippi." laughed Sam as he put his arm round my shoulder "You better be alright." He muttered coldly. My beloved Grandpa Horace had lost an arm laying track for the railroad. I wondered who had built this tower, As we walked into the dappled shade of its staggering bulk I saw it covered in thousands of black workers, clutching spanners and blowtorches, servicing its every need. No way did I want to be swallowed up by this beast. "I don't want to go up." I looked at Sam pleadingly. Leonard and Sticks were loudly insistent. They were enjoying being part of the crowd of white folks gently jostling toward the ticket kiosk. The press of bodies, sweat, perfume and pomade made it hard to breath. Leonard look down at me, I remember him saying "Beulah you don't look too.."
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