BULLDAGGER
By Nicole Bosiy
The beams of light converged on the woman at the center of the stage. Elizabeth was sure her dress must’ve had tiny crystals sewn into the weave of the fabric because, under the pouring light, she glittered gracefully. She was leaning close to the microphone, gloved hand cradling it as if it were a delicate neck, singing in the most serene, lulling key. Elizabeth watched as the woman swayed side to side in accordance with her voice; though it melted with the brass melodies harmonizing alongside her, it was clear that her voice was the band’s principal instrument. It was beautiful.
Elizabeth leaned over to her husband. “What’s her name again?”
“Oh, um.” He fumbled with the program on his lap. “It’s—”
“Let me help you, dear,” his mother said, snatching the program from his hand so she could turn to the proper page. She frowned at the crinkles in the paper from her son’s hasty thumbing at it and so smoothed them out on her thigh before handing it back to him.
“Thank you, mother.” Elizabeth watched their interaction wordlessly. “Um—she’s—it’s Josephine Calloway. You heard of her before, Bets?”
“I don’t believe so.” Her words were weighed down by a sort of mournfulness. “I’ve seen her perform while in the city before, in Harlem. She gave a talk at the end of her set about how she was very excited to be singing there because she’d moved to New York from Virginia with hardly any dough but a whole lotta gumption.” He trailed off, seemingly expecting Elizabeth to engage him further, but she just nodded. “Um, I’m—I’m impressed that she was able to book a show on a cruise. Mother said that the competition for this sort of gig is intense.
“Oh yes!” his mother interjected a bit too loudly, causing the couple at the table in front to look back at them with scornful faces. “When I was a singer in Chicago—way before I’d ever had my darling—getting booked in any sort of high-end club was a big deal; if you got lucky enough to book something continuous like a residency on a cruise liner, you were set for the year.”
“Right,” Elizabeth’s husband replied quickly before swinging back to look at his wife. Elizabeth felt a little silly for weighing these two attributes with equal merit, but she was so struck by how Josephine was as talented as she was beautiful. She hoped Josephine knew this fact about herself because all Elizabeth could do was be mesmerized by how her smooth, breathy voice seemed to complement the softness of her being. There was also that glittering dress that appeared to have been sewn onto her body—the fabric itself was the color of a bleeding heart, and the shape of it on her made Josephine look like she’d been divinely projected out from the darkness at the back of the stage.
All Elizabeth could manage to do was gawk as Josephine held onto the microphone as if it were her lover and sang. She had on these white satin gloves that ran past her elbows, and her fingertips glazed along the microphone stand as if it were skin.
She blinked. Her husband’s gaze bored into the side of her face, waiting.
“She’s quite talented,” Elizabeth coughed. He smiled a little, pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, and fidgeted around in his seat until he was somewhat comfortable and facing the stage again.
She was more than that, though. She was incandescent.
***
The most heavily advertised part of the cruise—the whole reason her husband’s family had even sprung for the damn thing—was the whale watching. The newspapers had been swirling for weeks about how one of the most well-studied Atlantic whale pods recently welcomed a new addition. There hadn’t been a recorded birth of a new whale in just under two decades and, due in part to the slow news cycle at the time, the newspapers exploded the story as if it were the second coming. Apparently, to miss the opportunity of seeing this calf would have been adjacent to sinful.
However, Elizabeth disagreed. She felt that enjoying jazz performances late into the night was a far more enriching experience, but her mother-in-law had pulled their party out of the lounge before Josephine had even begun expressing her gratitude for her audience.
“Don’t you think it’d be rude for us to leave right now?” Elizabeth asked her mother-in-law as the woman shoved everyone out of their seats.
Her mother-in-law scoffed. “Show business is hardly ever kind. Oh, honey,” she tugged at her son’s lapels, “let’s get going right now. You know that growing families are the most exciting thing.”
“Mother, they’re whales. Not humans.”
Her brows knit together, and her skin splotched with red. “It’s a child nonetheless! There’s no need to be so cold!”
They were one of only a handful of groups present for whale watching when they entered the deck. Her mother-in-law was jabbering ad nauseam about just how exciting this whole prospect was—how, after so many years of unnecessary cruelty to this species and a seemingly impending extinction, this miraculous life had come about, by and large saving the lineage of the pod and the species as a whole. It was all very sensational.
“It’s such a touching story,” her mother-in-law wept, blotting her cheeks with her son’s handkerchief. “It’s so incredible how, even after so many hopeless years, life can come and bring so much happiness to a family.”
Her son attempted to placate the woman’s mounting hysterics by reaching for her and began, “Well, mother, it—”
“Imagine the happiness that little calf’s grandmother would have!” Her eyes were red and weepy. “Imagine!”
Elizabeth was sure that their party was tied with the whales for being spectacle of the hour, but before the embarrassment could fully set in, a young child called out: “Look, mommy! It’s right there!”
Elizabeth looked to the water just as a whale’s back breached the surface—a smooth gray hill on a deep blue landscape. The tail flicked some water into the air, and the ocean remained undisturbed for only a moment longer before five whales burst out into the air, their backs then hitting the water with the most magnificent splashes. The sound was thundering, and it was that which alerted the other guests to file onto the deck to observe the natural beauty of the moment. Quickly, the deck filled with various groups of people all watching the sea in awe, hundreds of eyes especially glued on the duo of the decade: the long-anticipated calf and its doting mother.
“Oh, how precious!” her mother-in-law sobbed. “Betty, you can just see how special this is for her.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together and stared straight at the water, her focus intense and unmoving so as not to accidentally encourage her mother-in-law to continue on with her usual hysterics, pleas, and unending questions.
She stared so hard that the awestruck commotion around her began fading in with the sound of the pod hitting the water over and over again.
A woman’s laugh snapped her attention back to the present. The sound was joyous and bright, and Elizabeth thought it almost as lovely as the singing in the lounge. When she searched for its source, she was struck by the image of Josephine, still in her glittering dress but now also wearing a fluffy coat, flanked by two of her bandmates. Josephine leaned against the banister and stretched out her legs. She was smoking a cigarette, and her gaze easily alternated between her bandmates and the performance in the sea.
“Bets?” her husband asked. “You alright?”
“I’m fine.” She swallowed. “You know I get nervous when your mother begins talking like that.”
He nodded in acknowledgement, but there was a solemn disappointment underlying his expression. He turned back to face the sea. Despite the guilt prickling the back of her neck, Elizabeth looked towards Josephine again, who was now only accompanied by her cigarette, and began inching away from her party.
“Betty, where are you going?” her mother-in-law cried, pulling on her sleeve. “Look at what’s before you!”
So Elizabeth stopped moving and looked once again at the calf breaching the surface in synchronicity with its mother, and then back over to Josephine. She took the woman in methodically. She began with her long, smooth legs, then worked up her slender torso and round bust that were all encased in that shining red, lingered on her collarbones and throat before finally reaching her face.
Shyly, out from under her eyelashes, the woman in red was already looking right at her.
Nicole Bosiy
5/31/23
