23. Chapter 20 | Elle
She'd finally said it flat, while Dom pretended to balance the register. "We're going to dinner at the Castles' this Sunday. We can't put Miss Virgie off any longer." Dom tensed, but didn't object, and Elle counted that as a victory.
Dom had armed herself in a black suit and black tie — dressed more for a funeral than a reunion, but striking as always. On the walk over Elle reached out and squeezed her arm, where the muscle was well-defined under the jacket sleeve, comforting both of them.
She told herself the nervousness walking up N.
Tonti was on Dom's behalf. That was mostly true.
But she'd also spent eleven months with no table to go back to, and she understood — more than she'd said aloud — what it meant to watch someone be let back into one.
She needed this to work for Dom. She also needed to see that it could work at all.
Dozens of episodes of The Sable Hour. Countless live appearances. She'd never been this nervous before a scene.
CJ walked a few steps ahead, already thinking about the food — she could tell by the pace. Papa Louie fell a few steps behind, his hips aching today, and they didn't linger for him because drawing attention to it would only hurt his pride. Elle moved between them, a director with a difficult cast.
"She's not going to make it a big deal," Elle said.
"I know."
"She's going to open the door and it'll just be—"
"Elle."
"What."
"I know." Dom kept walking. Then: "Why are you nervous?"
"I'm not nervous."
Dom glanced at her.
"Maybe I'm a little nervous," Elle admitted.
917 N. Tonti was a double shotgun with chipped and faded yellow paint. A porch with two chairs and big potted ferns doing their best to stand up to the heat. Elle thought it was perfect — exactly the right set for a family reunion.
Thelma Blake would have arrived with flowers, a bottle of good wine, a compliment already loaded and aimed — a way to open, a way to be liked before anyone had the chance to decide on their own.
She knew exactly how to walk into a room and make herself easy to love in under a minute. She'd built a whole career on it.
She'd brought nothing today but herself, and it terrified her more than any camera ever had.
CJ made it to the steps first. He always did. He took them two at a time.
"Hi Mama Virgie!" — already through the door before it was fully open, already inside, already home.
Dom stopped on the sidewalk.
Elle said nothing. She waited.
A beat, then CJ's voice from inside, clear through the window: "Yeah, I told you she was coming. She's right outside." A muffled response. Then laughter.
Dom froze.
Elle touched her shoulder. Dom stiffened under her hand — and Elle thought she might turn around, might walk back the way they came and let this be another Sunday she didn't come. Then Papa Louie finally caught up, a little winded, and looked at them both without saying anything.
They walked up the steps together.
Miss Virgie was waiting in the front room. She smiled when she saw Dom — then crossed to her and put both hands on her face.
"There you are," she said.
Dom's shoulders dropped. Her head dropped. Then she wrapped her arms around Miss Virgie and embraced her.
"Hey, Mama Virgie."
It was a long hug. Elle looked at the wall. When they finally let go, Dom reached back and found Elle's arm.
"You've technically already met," she said. Then, quieter: "But this is—this is my Elle."
The front room smelled like Pine-Sol and Sunday. Family photographs covered the walls and lined the top of a doily-covered piano in the corner. Elle's gaze went to it automatically, reading it like a set: what's the story, who built it, what did they want people to feel.
The photographs pulled her in. Oretha at maybe ten, already looking like she had opinions.
A girl who had to be her sister, gap-toothed and laughing.
Miss Virgie young, then younger still. Smiling people she didn't know yet.
A younger Papa Louie—barely recognizable, all that hair—beside a man with Oretha's chin who had to be their father.
And then: Dom.
Dom at seven in a stiff dress, tolerating it.
Dom at ten in a school photo, still in the dress, an expression of someone waiting for this to be over.
Dom at thirteen in white for confirmation beside Oretha and the sister.
And then Dom at maybe fifteen, sixteen—trousers, suspenders, short hair, chin up.
Looking at the camera with that flat, certain expression.
Right there between a church picnic snapshot and what looked like a graduation. No explanation. No apology.
Elle turned and found Dom across the room. She waved her over.
"Turns out you've always been this good looking," Elle said.
Dom reached out and let her fingers brush the photograph of her teenage self. "She kept them up," she said, quiet. Almost to herself. "All of them, even when I started to—" She stopped. Started again. "She even kept the pictures of me in slacks."
Elle put her hand out and rubbed slow circles on Dom's back while she took a breath.
Eventually they were broken from their reverie by CJ's voice from the back of the house, pitched high—the register he hit when he was genuinely electrified.
"But did he sleep in this room? Like, in this actual—"
Oretha's voice was dry and tired. "He slept in the back bedroom. Same bed you sleep in when you stay over."
"I sleep in that bed?" A pause in which Elle could perfectly picture CJ's face. "I've been sleeping in a famous person's bed?"
Elle looked quizzically at Dom.
"When organizers and movement people come to town, a lot of hotels refuse to house them—some try to get them arrested," Dom said. "The Castles let them stay here."
A beat. Then CJ, even higher: "JOHN LEWIS slept in my bed."
"Some of those people are famous," Dom said, not looking away from the photographs.
Elle laughed, small and private. She thought about herself at that age—all she'd wanted was fame, or at least proximity to it. She had no idea how much it would come to cost her.
The smell of roast chicken, mac and cheese, greens, and cornbread reached them before they got to the kitchen. It hit Elle like a physical thing; she'd forgotten what Sunday dinners smelled like.
Oretha glanced over from the stove when they came in. "Doris Jean."
Doris Jean was already moving.
She crossed the kitchen and assessed Dom—taking inventory, checking for damage. Instead of speaking, she pulled Dom into a hug. Dom stiffened, then embraced her.
"Hey," Doris Jean murmured into her shoulder.
"Hey," Dom replied.
They stood for a moment, a beat that held years. Then Doris Jean stepped back and scrutinized her once more.
"Did you get taller?"
"No," Dom said. "I think you shrank."
Doris Jean laughed, stepping back. Dom turned. "This is Elle."
"Yeah," Doris Jean said. "Oretha told me all about her."
Elle shot Oretha a look across the kitchen. Oretha gave the smallest shake of her head—not everything—and returned to the stove.
"Good things?" Elle asked.
"Mostly," Doris Jean said, in a tone that affirmed it.
CJ materialized in the doorway, a handful of forks already in hand. Dom tilted her head at the table. He went.
Miss Virgie turned from the stove, wiped her hands, and looked Dom over.
"You look thinner."
"I'm all muscle, Mama Virgie," Dom's mouth dropped in mock offense. "A respectable middleweight."
"Mm." Miss Virgie turned back to the stove. "I'm going to feed you until you're a heavyweight."
The table was too small for seven, and nobody cared. Mismatched leaf, white cloth, food without ceremony because it didn't need any. Elle sat between Doris Jean and Papa Louie. Dom was across from her. CJ sat between Miss Virgie and Oretha.
Miss Virgie insisted on saying grace, her voice measured and plain. Elle felt Papa Louie's warm, wrinkled hand on her left and Doris Jean's decisive grip on her right, and looked across at Dom, whose eyes were closed.
"Amen."
"Amen."
CJ reached for the chicken.
"Guests eat first," Miss Virgie said, passing it directly to Elle.
"She's not really a guest," CJ said.
"Well, it's her first time at my table. And it sure shouldn't be her last." She smiled and passed Elle the chicken.
CJ talked for most of the meal—about the march, about the signs, about something Oretha had said at the last planning meeting that he was still turning over.
The conversation wove between the movement and neighborhood gossip, easy and overlapping, nobody waiting for a pause to speak.
Periodically Elle looked up and found Dom already looking at her.
After supper, Elle volunteered to help clean up. Dom made her way back to the wall of pictures in the front room. Miss Virgie followed.
Elle watched the front room through the doorway, not trying to overhear — or at least, not trying very hard.
Dom stood before a photograph of herself at fifteen: trousers, suspenders, chin up.
"You never stopped being one of mine," Miss Virgie said. "Not for one day. But you stayed away — I let you, because you're stubborn and you had to come back yourself." She turned to face her. "You were always welcome. You understand me? Every Sunday you didn't come, there was a seat."
From the kitchen, CJ's voice carried, explaining something to Oretha with full conviction.
Miss Virgie glanced toward the sound, then back to Dom. "That boy of yours — take him to get his photo taken sometime soon. I want him up there. Just as much as I want you up there."
Dom smiled, ducked her head, then glanced toward the kitchen doorway — toward Elle.
Miss Virgie followed her gaze. "You can get me a picture of that girl too," she said. "Lord knows she's pretty enough."
Dom laughed, small and private. "I know. I'm a lucky girl, huh."
Miss Virgie kissed her forehead. "Yes you are. Come help me with the coffee."
Oretha, also definitely not eavesdropping, handed Elle a wet plate to dry and smiled.
"Look what you did," Oretha said.
Elle glanced over. "I didn't do anything."
"You brought her home." Matter-of-fact. Not warm exactly, but real. "Three years I couldn't get her through that door. Mama couldn't. You got her here in record time." She set a bowl on the rack. "That's not nothing."
Elle kept her gaze on the dish in her hands. She was proud of it. She might as well own that.
"It feels good," Elle said. "To make something right again."
"Now imagine how much you could make right for all of our people," Oretha said. "As Thelma Blake."
Elle went still. She glanced toward the doorway — Doris Jean had gone somewhere, and Miss Virgie's voice carried from the front room, far enough.
She looked back at Oretha, then dropped her voice anyway.
"I tried to make something right once," she said.
"With Jackie Kennedy. All I did was destroy myself.
" She looked back at Oretha. "I'll leave the saving the world to you. This right here is enough for me."
Oretha studied her, weighing its value and its cost. "How long can that be enough for you?"
"Please." Elle laughed sharply. "I'm not going to be the mouthpiece of the movement, Oretha. Don't try to force me."
Oretha shook her head. "I'm not going to force you into anything. For Dom more than anyone, I wouldn't." She handed Elle the last bowl. "But when you're ready — I'll be waiting."
Elle looked away and drew her dish towel across the clean bowl.
This was enough. She told herself. Dom, the bar, this family — they were more than enough.