Hazel maneuvered around pools of water as she made her way to Stanley’s. The family-owned deli was a two-story redbrick building on the corner of Chelsea Avenue and Pope Street in the North Memphis neighborhood called Douglass, where Della’s family had lived since emancipation.
Stanley’s was a staple in the neighborhood. Even though folk called it a deli, people went there to buy most things: fresh okra, fishing hooks and live bait, ice-cream sundaes and freezing-cold Coca-Colas. A long glass case spanned the length of one wall and displayed chicken thighs and beef sausages. A gilded Victrola in the corner was constantly playing the soft moans of Blind Boy Fuller and Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie. Shelves were stocked with saltwater taffy, tins of sardines in oil, bottles of molasses. A small garden in the back grew tomatoes and okra and muscadine and sweet corn. Stanley could be found either behind the counter or out front, stooped in front of his sign, boasting in chalk that he had the best melons for a mile.
Stanley was white and foreign and Jewish, but he was beloved in their Black neighborhood. Everyone liked him. His deli had a colored section, but the sign was more decorative than anything. The shop was too small to section off, and given that most of his customers were Black, Stanley never did make a fuss about it. Even the old Baptist ladies forgave him his Judaism, unable to resist his beef ribs. No one knew why he’d chosen Memphis or how he’d even heard of it all the way in Germany, yet here he was for going on ten years now. He talked sometimes of a storm brewing in his homeland; perhaps because he was a butcher, he could smell death.
During the crash of ’29, Stanley’s deli did not go bankrupt. This simple financial fact infuriated white Memphis. They could not understand that smart planning and the sheer fact that humans will always need bread were the reasons Stanley’s did not have to shutter. It did not matter; the Klan shuttered it for him. Set fire to the building one night. The next day, all of Douglass, thousands of Black hands, came out to help Stanley rebuild, brick by brick. Even Hazel, just eight years old then, had swept ash from the foundation.
So, when Stanley closed up shop on Friday nights for his Sabbath, the neighborhood would fry catfish in their front yards instead. And when Stanley refused to sell pork, the neighborhood did not understand his reasoning, but they did not argue with it. They made the slightly farther walk to another butcher, on Chelsea, for their pigs’ feet, hocks, and salt pork without complaint.
“Ah, the quiet rose is here,” Stanley said when Hazel pushed open the door of the deli. He stood, tall and slight, in a bloodstained apron behind the glass display case showcasing the chicken gizzards he had just butchered.
Hazel heard music as she reached into her pocket to pull out her grocery list. Memphis Minnie’s voice poured forth from the Victrola:
I works on the levee mama both night and day
I ain’t got nobody, keep the water away.
She scoffed. How fitting, she thought, wiping her feet on the doormat. She walked to the counter and was holding up her mother’s list to Stanley when she paused. A voice, alto, full of vibrato, was singing along to the music. It was the most beautiful thing Hazel had ever heard. It sounded like a man had swallowed a nightingale.
A tall, unknown boy stood at the Victrola. After spending years delivering mended dresses to countless households in North Memphis, Hazel just about knew every face in Douglass. This boy was new, foreign. Hand in his pocket, his back to Hazel, he tapped his foot to the music and sang along in a way that made Hazel forget herself for a moment, forget the grocery list, the many scheduled appointments in her mother’s shop. All she wanted to do was stare and listen.
Stanley must have seen the change in Hazel. He smiled knowingly and cocked his head toward the boy. “Go on. Say hello.” Stanley’s thick German accent made his words seem more like commands than a friendly suggestion.
Hazel’s eyes widened, and she sucked in air. Bit her lip and twisted her long gold rosary.
“Go on,” Stanley said, gently taking the list from Hazel’s hand. “I’ll get these things for you.”