Two
BACK HOME on Louisiana Avenue, in my sisters’ half of our side-by-side shotgun house, I take out my tin of paints, my pad of paper, my turpentine and linseed oil in their jars, my pigment-stained rags. I’m going to paint Papa’s easy chair.
A month ago, Maman had her new husband take it out to the street. I watched, disbelieving, from the window, as Jean Pierre struggled to drag it down the steps. My father’s chair. His mornings with the paper, his evenings with the magazines, how I’d perch on the arm, watching him turn the pages.
Bernard, my eldest sister’s husband, was the only one home.
He rose from the kitchen table when I rushed in to tell him, followed me to the street, fumbled when we lifted it, his injured hand unable to grip, jerking upward to balance the weight on his forearm instead.
We cleared a spot for it in the corner, near the door.
I mix the blues and violets and blacks on a sheet of glass, hands trembling.
I need to really paint. Like Monet, going blind.
Like Frida Kahlo after the bus accident.
What else to do with this fire in my chest?
But an hour passes and another, and the painting is splotchy and crude, absent of any true feeling, the turpentine bruise hued when I soak the brushes.
My sisters come home—Claire, with a bag of groceries; Adele, with Baby Rudy on her hip. I gather the paint tubes, drop them into the tin, tidying so Rudy can crawl around and play.
“We went to Dryades Street,” Adele says.
“Would have invited you along, but you weren’t home.
” They’re dressed in the red gingham. We got a bolt of it from Halpern’s.
Claire made a belted skirt, Adele an off-the-shoulder top.
In my closet hangs a pair of matching trousers.
For as long as I remember, we’ve dressed this way to go out.
Heads turn, women stare, men whistle, my sisters pretend not to notice.
I follow their lead, always have. The three Honoré sisters, except I’m the only one of us who still carries the name.
“I went to meet Delphine,” I say.
Claire sighs. “She never comes around anymore. Did she forget that we’re her cousins, too?”
“There’s a place we like to go,” I say, drying my brushes on a rag. And then I’m back in the garden, and Delphine’s blushing, saying Bill’s name. What would my sisters make of it all? I want to tell them. Imagine telling them. But Adele makes a sound, wrinkles her nose.
“The smell,” she says, waving her hand toward the turpentine. “It’s fine that you’re sleeping here on the sofa. But do you have to paint here, too?”
I’ve commandeered a tiny corner of their pink-walled living room for my painting supplies and a basket of clothes and the blanket and pillow I sleep with.
There are six people living here on my sisters’ side; only Maman and Jean Pierre on the other side of the wall where my bedroom is, where I lived all my life until two months ago, when I heard Maman and Jean Pierre late at night, their love sounds unmistakable, just four weeks after Papa died.
(“Shakespearean in her betrayal,” Delphine fumed when I told her.
“Biblical.”) I left right then, made my bed on my sisters’ sofa, and that’s where I’ve slept ever since.
Maman hasn’t said a word to me about it.
I haven’t said a word to her, either, about anything.
I stopped going with her to the Adamses’ to help with the chores and the errands.
If she cares, she hasn’t let on. She always told me I was too much like my father, not enough like my sisters, who knew what was expected of them and how to behave.
The comparison stopped three years ago, when Adele told us over dinner that Al had proposed and she was going to say yes.
Maman was silent, next to me at the table.
“Of all the fine Creole men in the ward, you’re choosing the darkest,” she finally said.
“Undoing a century’s worth of progress.”
Adele forced a smile. “I love him.”
I went from being the perplexing, concerning child to being invisible, Adele stepping into my former place.
Since then, she’s been trying to regain Maman’s approval.
Not even protesting when Maman sent Papa away.
Biting her tongue and nodding along when Claire said Maman certainly knew best. Shushing me when I wouldn’t stop demanding that we all visit.
Impossible now to consider painting on that side of the house. But I tell my sisters I understand.
Adele smiles sympathetically. “Are you sleeping okay on this old thing?”
“She looks tired,” Claire says. “Honey, are you tired? It might not be a bad idea to take a break from all this anyway.”
“I know,” Adele says. “Come out with Al and me tomorrow night. Claire’s babysitting. Invite Delphine along if you want to.”
The next evening after dinner, while my sisters and I wash up in the kitchen, I ask Adele if I can borrow a dress for our night out.
“Sure. But not the pink one,” she says. “Or the polka dot.”
Claire takes my hand in her softer one, scrutinizes the paint around my cuticles and under my fingernails. “Look at this,” she says. Adele turns the faucet, peels off her washing gloves and sets them aside. My sisters study my nails, my face, my hair.
“Poor thing,” Adele says.
“Let’s get her fixed up,” Claire says. “Maybe she’ll catch a cute boy’s eye tonight. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? A little sparkle to cheer you up?”
Soon my hair’s brushed and pulled back, my fingernails passable. My brows are darkened, my cheeks rouged and lips pink. I’m wearing a pale-blue dress with a red belt and matching heels. Adele and Claire are pleased. Delphine knocks on the door in the same dress as yesterday.
Claire looks her over. “That’s an unusual silhouette,” she says. “I haven’t seen a waist dropped like that in a long time. Is the style coming back?” An insincere question. Claire’s always up on the trends.
“I wouldn’t know,” Delphine says. “I just like the way it moves when I’m dancing.”
Now Adele and Al are here with us at the doorway, in navy, arms looped around each other’s waists. The rosebud in Al’s lapel matches the burgundy of Adele’s mouth. Next to them, no matter what we wear, Delphine and I are just girls.
“It’s been ages since I’ve gone to Les Jeunes Amis Hall,” Claire says. “Have a wonderful time.”
But as soon as we’re up the block, Adele glances over her shoulder at Delphine and me. “I’m assuming you two can keep a secret.”
“Sure we can,” Delphine says.
“We aren’t going to the Jeunes Amis.”
“We’re going to the Drop,” Al says, easy, like it’s a small thing to go against Claire and my mother and Delphine’s mother, too.
Delphine reaches for my hand. Squeezes. Not only the two of us, keeping secrets.
We’re buoyant now, the four of us in on something, and just a few blocks later, we’re following Al and Adele inside the Dew Drop Inn, past the barbershop and into the lounge, set up with white tablecloths, full of cigarette smoke and finely dressed colored people.
No one checks wrists at the doorway here.
“You girls go pick us a table,” Al says. “I’ll buy us some drinks.”
A few players are assembling their instruments on the bandstand, no music yet, but the room is loud with voices. “Their house band is the best in New Orleans,” Adele says. “Just wait until they start.”
“How many times have you been here?” I ask.
“Oh, just a few.” She’s coy. Conspiratorial. I’m trying to get my bearings.
“Let’s sit close to the stage,” Delphine says.
The crowd’s thickening, the room warming, men and women leaning against the walls, women perching in men’s laps at the tables.
Al brings us four beers in amber bottles.
We clink them. The lights dim. Someone behind us is looking for a chair.
Delphine notices, slides next to me, our sides touching, sharing the seat.
The musicians look to one another, and the crowd senses a shift, grows quiet save for a whoop and a “Come on now,” and the drummer counts to set the rhythm and we’re off.
All the players at once, sudden and complete as a downpour.
Bright blare of the trumpet. Body thrumming from the bass.
Richness of the piano notes. Melody and rhythm and I’m not only here anymore.
I’m also with Papa again, he’s bent over his gramophone in the moment between the crackle and the music.
All around me in the club are faces full of feeling.
Next to me, a woman presses her cheek against a man’s and I flush, thinking of Hattie kissing my neck.
Loudness all around me, safe to dream. Everything gone or forbidden is mine.
And here are the musicians finishing a song and smiling, sipping water, sipping liquor, communicating to one another with raised eyebrows and sweeps of their hands.
Here’s Adele’s head resting on Al’s shoulder and Delphine saying into my ear, “This is everything I ever want.”
Several songs in, a young man joins them on the bandstand, blissful as he sings “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.
” The older men play softer as they accompany him, shake their heads in admiration.
I want someone to look at me in that way.
With such appreciation and wonder. Papa used to, but he’s gone now.
The boy croons. Delphine takes my hand in hers, laces our fingers together.
And then the set ends and when the applause fades, Al turns to Delphine and me and says, “Let’s none of us forget that our birthplace is the birthplace of jazz. ”