Four
DELPHINE DOESN’T MEET ME IN the garden for a long stretch of days. She’s off with Bill, she’s left me alone. I still go every afternoon just in case.
It’s the second week of December and the next batch of tables are ready for assembly.
My sisters and I are sorting our clothing, choosing our favorite pieces to keep, giving the others away.
We’re selling our jewelry. I’m going along with everything.
I don’t know what else to do. On Thursdays, I tell Hattie how close we’re getting to leaving, search for traces of sadness, for evidence that she loves me.
She has little to say. Her hands hold steady as she guides fabric through the machine.
And then, one afternoon, when I go to the garden, Delphine’s there. On the bench, swollen-eyed, pinching the inside of her elbow. She drops her hand when she sees me and there’s a raw spot from where she’s twisted the skin.
“What is it?” I ask. “He didn’t end things, did he?”
“No,” she says. “But…” She takes my hand, lays it against her stomach. It’s firm and rounded where it used to be flat.
“Oh,” I say. “I thought—”
“We were,” she says. “He told me he was. But at the very beginning, there was a night when he got carried away. He didn’t stop in time.”
A tightness in my lungs. I want to gather all the photographs he ever took and light them on fire. I breathe. Steady myself. Ask her how long she’s known.
“I guess, if I’m honest, I’ve been trying to not know for a while now.
Hey. Odette. Will you look at me?” Her eyelids are pink and full, like they’d be painful to the touch.
But there’s some light in her eyes. “Bill’s happy.
Can you believe it? But Maman found me out.
She hasn’t told your mother yet. She wants to send me away. ”
“Away?”
“To the hospital. Where they sent your father.” My heart stops. Delphine, in that place. “She says I’ve been acting strangely. I haven’t. But it doesn’t even matter. All I have to be is an unwed mother, and they can keep me there.”
“No,” I say. “Bill needs to marry you, then.”
“We aren’t allowed to be married.” She’s suddenly small and fragile, twisting the skin again. “You know that. My birth certificate says Negro and his says white.”
“How about in a church where no one knows you? You could go to Baton Rouge or Lafayette.” My words come out frantic and fast. To think of her inside those gates, behind the heavy doors.
“Maybe we can find someone to make you a false birth certificate. Or maybe if you go far enough away, you can say that you lost it, and they’ll marry you anyway, and no one will ever guess that you’re colored. ”
“Shh,” she says. “We have a plan all figured out. Just listen.”
“What is it?”
“We’re leaving. Going to Los Angeles. Bill has dreams of working in the pictures, and this way you can go with your sisters after all. I’ll start a new life with a ring on my finger, and before we know it, you’ll be there, too.”
“Los Angeles,” I say. The pieces falling into place.
But Hattie, in her sewing room, giving me tea, kissing my mouth.
“Maybe you can convince her,” Delphine says, reading my mind. She squeezes my hand. “If she loves you, she’ll go.”
“I don’t know if she loves me.”
“How could she not?”
“When are you leaving?”
“In just a day or two. Bill needs to close up his studio and arrange for the shipping of all his things. I spent the morning at his house, helping to pack. Maman can’t know what I’m planning.
When it’s time, I’ll cram what I can into a suitcase and go.
” All these days I’ve been here waiting for her, she’s been forming a plan without me.
“I hope you’ll come soon,” she says. “Right after the New Year, just like you’ve been saying.
That would give us plenty of time before I have the baby.
We can set up the nursery together.” She’s standing now, hovering over me.
“I’ll write to you from California, when there isn’t any danger.
” But how will I stand it until then? A sense that we’re hurtling into nothingness.
She pulls me up, kisses my cheek. “It’s sort of a grand adventure, isn’t it? ” she says, and then she’s gone.
Three days later, Maman and Jean Pierre and Auntie Bertha come into the kitchen.
It’s evening, we’re drinking beers around the table, the conversation halts at the sight of their somber faces.
Baby Rudy’s on my lap. He’s been playing with the buttons of my sweater, rolling them between his tiny fingers.
I hold him tight, grateful for his weight.
“Your cousin’s gone,” Auntie Bertha says. No trace of Delphine’s beauty in her. No trace of Papa’s gentleness. Difficult to believe that she’s the sister and mother of the people I’ve loved most in the world.
Maman’s eyes are fixed on me, probing. “What do you know about it?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“What do you mean, gone?” Claire asks.
“Run away,” Auntie Bertha says. “With a man none of us know. A white man. Older.”
Adele shakes her head, disbelieving. “Why would she do that?”
“She’s carrying his baby,” Maman says. “Months along already.”
Her eyes are still boring into me. I meet them, stare back. For a few moments, I’m formidable. I owe her nothing. But what if I’m wrong, to not tell them what I know?
“This is it,” Auntie Bertha says. “I tried to help her. I was going to send her away to have the baby, and then she could have come back. Started over.”
“The reasonable thing to do,” Jean Pierre says, his arms crossed over his chest. I could hurl my beer glass at him.
“But she chose to take matters into her own hands,” Auntie Bertha continues. “Reckless. I’m finished with her.”
Maman puts her arm around Auntie Bertha’s shoulders. “You did everything you could. She’s in the Lord’s hands now.” Auntie Bertha starts to cry, and Maman ushers her to the back door, Jean Pierre following, shutting it as they go.
A silence at the table. No one saying anything. And then my sisters turn to me, waiting to hear what I know.
“We’ll leave you girls to talk,” Bernard says, standing. He heads toward the front of the house, nodding at Al to follow.
Adele sighs. “Poor Delphine. Tell us everything.”
Pressure in my eyes, a knot in my throat. “You promise you won’t repeat it?”
“Promise,” Adele says.
“Claire,” I say, “I need you to promise, too.”
Claire hesitates. “All right,” she finally says.
I tell them like a dam opening, everything at once. “She says it’s an adventure,” I say. But I also tell how at first she kept it a secret even from me. How I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that something about it is wrong.
“I wish you’d told us. This is what older sisters are for,” Adele says.
Claire says, “You have two sisters to turn to, but you never come to us for anything.”
“That isn’t true. I’m sleeping on your sofa, aren’t I? This thing with Delphine, it was a runaway train. And Auntie Bertha wasn’t going to help. She was going to send her to the same place Maman sent Papa. It was too risky to say anything.”
“Delphine?” Claire asks. “To East Louisiana?” She looks like someone’s slapped her. “I see.”
“I wish we could have talked to her before she left,” Adele says. “Wish we could have met him and made sure his intentions were good.”
“I do, too,” I say. “But she’s promised that she’ll write me soon.”
“Tell us when she does,” Adele says. “We’ll keep it between us.”
A few days after Christmas, when I go to Hattie’s door, she has a letter for me in a pink envelope. “It was addressed to my name,” Hattie says. “But inside was a note from Delphine, saying it was for you.”
I sit on her love seat, shivering as I unfold the pages.
Delphine says they made it to Los Angeles, drove all the way there in Bill’s car.
They broke down off the highway in Arizona, had to stay for a few days in a motel while it was fixed.
There was something about the desert, she says, that gave her the wildest dreams. Once they got to Los Angeles, they checked into a beautiful hotel with a king bed.
No one questioned them at the counter, she felt entirely welcome.
Bill left for a few hours one afternoon and came back with a diamond the likes of which she’d never seen, heavy when he slipped it on her finger.
They met a man in the hotel bar who works for Paramount Pictures and said he’d put a good word in.
Now they’re looking to buy a house near the studio, just in case.
She’s showing more and more each day, and Bill’s taken to kissing her belly whenever he leaves.
She says not to worry, that everything is beautiful, that she can’t wait to show me.
I collapse against the love seat. Exhale.
“Good news?” Hattie asks.
“Good news,” I say. “Want to read it?”
She doesn’t answer, and for the first time since I got here, I notice something’s wrong. She’s straight-backed at her sewing table, not working on anything. “We got some other mail, too,” she says. “Cyril’s being drafted.”
“Oh no,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“He says he’s been expecting it. But the reality is still sinking in.”
“During the holidays. It just isn’t right.”
“I haven’t slept since the notice came. I wanted to cancel the New Year’s party but Cyril’s insisting on having it. Our parents are, too. I can’t say I’m feeling very festive.”
I’ve never comforted her before. Never had reason to.
She never sat still and sad at the thought of me leaving.
But of course this is different. California isn’t a battleground; I’m being unfair.
“Come sit with me?” I ask. She joins me, clasps her hands on her lap.
I say, “Bernard was drafted around this time of year. I remember, it was terrible.”
“Terrible anytime, I guess.” She’s rubbing her knuckles with her thumb, pressing hard. Flash of Delphine, the bruise by her elbow. I put my hand over Hattie’s to stop her.
“We’re going to Los Angeles,” I say. “It’s happening. If you care, we’re going to have to make a plan. Or admit that it’s almost over, for us.”
I love you, I imagine her saying. I need you here with me. My body’s hungry for her body, but what I want even more are her words.
I undress her. I show her how well I can comfort.
Show her that I, too, can make her forget.
My mouth to the warmth of her. Her back arches, she moans.
And then she’s above me, I’m flat on the rug.
I wait for her to tease me. To be commanding.
But for the first time ever, she’s tentative.
She’s all soft lips and careful hands when I wish she would tear me apart.