The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

Chapter 4





Clarice Jordan Baker was the first black child born at University Hospital. It was reported in black newspapers as far away as Los

Angeles. Clarice’s mother, Beatrice Jordan, encased the news clippings of the glad tidings in ornate gold frames and placed them

strategically around her house. No guest could sit at the Jordans’ dining table or use their toilet without being aware that the

family had once made history. The clipping over the mantel in the living room was snipped from the front page of the Indianapolis

Recorder. The caption beneath the photo read “The New Negro Family.” The article about Clarice’s birth heralded the arrival of

the “new Negro family of the desegregated 1950s.” Her father, attorney Abraham Jordan, was missing from the picture.

Beatrice worked as a nursing assistant at University Hospital. She got it into her head one day that her child would be born

there, instead of at the colored hospital an hour away in Evansville where everyone in Leaning Tree had their babies. Fortunately

for her, this wild idea coincided with the arrival of Dr. Samuel Snow, who had come to Indiana State University at Plainview from

New York City that year to preside over the ob-gyn department. Dr. Snow let it be known when he came to the hospital that, under

his leadership, access to the department would no longer be restricted by race. The university agreed to his demand, believing he

would get over that bit of New York–style eccentricity once he got settled in southern Indiana and gained an appreciation for how

things worked there. But Dr. Snow did not change his mind, and Beatrice, on the job well into her pregnancy, arranged to

repeatedly waddle across his path and allow him to believe he had handpicked her—instead of the other way around—for the honor

of making history at University Hospital.

In Beatrice’s retelling, the minor complications of Clarice’s birth were elevated to terrifying hours during which she and her

baby balanced on a knife’s edge between survival and doom. When Beatrice sensed in her daughter some resistance to acknowledging

her mother’s wisdom, she trotted out the tale of how her solid judgment was the only reason the two of them hadn’t died in a

substandard Evansville clinic. Clarice heard the story so often in her childhood that it became as familiar to her as “Cinderella

” or “The Pied Piper.” When relating the long version of the ordeal she suffered giving Clarice life, Beatrice often employed

overripe fruit as stage props. For the short version, she simply pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and whispered, “It

was a horror show.”

Freshly snatched from death’s door or not, an hour after Clarice was born her mother was fully made up, coiffed, dressed in a

satin bed coat, and propped up in her hospital bed, ready for the photographers who had gathered to snap pictures of the

inspirational middle-class colored family. But Mr. Jordan couldn’t be found. By the time he was located, sharing an intimate

moment with one of the hospital cleaning ladies in a supply closet, the photographers had taken their snapshots and gone. That

cleaning lady may or may not have been the woman who gave him the syphilis he passed on to his wife, sterilizing her and ensuring

that Clarice would be an only child; Abraham was never quite certain.

And so it went, from the time Clarice was old enough to understand what was what until her father was too sick to get into

trouble. Abraham Jordan cheated and lied. Beatrice prayed, consulted with her pastor, prayed again, and then accepted each

deception with a smile. Clarice watched and learned.

Unlike her mother, who had been taken by surprise, Clarice had received fair warning about Richmond. Just before Clarice’s

marriage, Odette had a frank talk with her friend that forced Clarice to open her eyes and see just how much Richmond had in

common with Abraham Jordan. Clarice had nearly called off the wedding, but, because she loved Richmond so, she chose to rely upon

the counsel of her mother and the same pastor whose guidance would lead Beatrice into a life consumed by bitterness. Clarice had

weighed her options and—like a fool, she later saw—she had decided to make a deal with Richmond that allowed her to clamp her

eyes shut again. The deal was, so long as Richmond didn’t embarrass her by being indiscreet the way her father had been, she

would accept him as he was and go on as if everything were perfect.

They both stuck by the terms of their agreement, but Clarice’s definition of indiscretion shifted over the years. At first, she

told herself she could handle his missteps if he was at home and in bed beside her at a decent hour every night. But that didn’t

even make it through their first year. So she decided late nights were okay, as long as no strange women called the house. When

she gave up on that, she settled for not being confronted with physical evidence.

As it turned out, Richmond was good about leaving no evidence. Clarice never had to scrub lipstick stains from his shorts or brush

face powder from his lapels. She never contracted any diseases. And unlike her father, who had cast his seed around with the

abandon of malfunctioning farm equipment, Richmond was careful. Clarice was never greeted at her front door by a younger woman

clutching the hand of a child who had Richmond’s pretty mouth.

That Sunday afternoon at the All-You-Can-Eat, between the example of her parents and the years she had spent honoring her part of

her deal with Richmond, Clarice told herself that, given time, she could find her way back to that blissful state of mind in which

the absence of sexually transmitted diseases and not having bastard children dropped off at her door were sufficient proof of her

husband’s love and respect. She was wrong.