Six
MY SISTERS TELL ME HOW to be a wife while Cyril’s away. Write letters, they say, at least one a week but more is better. Fill them with details of home. So I write to Cyril about what his mother cooked for dinner, which of his father’s backyard vegetable crops are thriving.
It’s the end of January when I get another letter from Delphine.
I sit in the winter sun on the front porch and tear open the seal.
I can tell by the first line, something’s wrong.
There’s news she doesn’t know how to tell me.
I’m afraid it’s about the baby, skim to understand, but there isn’t language to latch on to.
I start again, slower this time. She says she’s gotten herself into something.
She can’t find her way out of it. She says the house they bought is in a white neighborhood, but I thought there was no such thing in Los Angeles.
She says Bill asked around at the studios, found out none of them employ colored people for any of their high-level positions, and didn’t dare ask about the employment prospects of white men with colored wives.
I still don’t understand what she’s trying to tell me.
Until I get to the part where she says she’s let Bill convince her to pass.
I have to become white now. A woman with no family besides my own little one.
It’s the only way to do it and not get caught.
I’m not to contact her when we get to Los Angeles.
She says she’s sorry. She says it three times.
I take the letter to my sisters. They stand in the pink living room with their shoulders touching, reading it. Reading it again. Numb, all of us. None of us speaking.
Back at the Laurent house, in Cyril’s room, I sit on his bed and look at the long strip of wallpaper between the ceiling and the picture rail.
It’s a child’s wallpaper, of trains passing through forests and tunnels, and I don’t know if it’s meant to be the same train—a progression through time—or different trains, at various places in their journeys.
I don’t recognize my life.
I imagine Delphine and me holding separate ends of a very long string.
I imagine us singing the same song in different rooms.
I wake in the morning, my dream from the night before still vivid. The first since Papa died. Flowers and a snake and a pool of clear water, a full moon so low it skims the ground. I reach for the stationery before I remember.
After three weeks in the Laurent house, the phone rings early in the morning. Hattie knocks on Cyril’s bedroom door. “It’s Claire for you,” she says.
Mama and Papa Laurent are in the kitchen, fixing breakfast. I take the phone.
“Lionel’s in trouble,” Claire says. “We need you to come over.”
I dress quickly, Mama Laurent handing me coffee at the bedroom door. Drink it down, set the mug in the sink, hurry through the streets to the blue house. Rudy, fussing, lifts his arms when I walk through the door. I scoop him up. Adele’s watching out the window. “What’s going on?” I ask her.
“Al’s coming from the police station now, bringing Lionel with him. He says it’s never been as bad as this and we have to go.”
Bernard, leaning forward on the sofa, rubbing his forehead, says, “We’re so close. If we can stay for just two more weeks, we’ll be able to get the payment.”
“Al’s probably scared,” Claire says. “That’s all.”
But then we see them on the stairs. Al’s shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a sheen of sweat on his skin even though the weather’s mild. And behind him, Lionel, the entire right half of his face purple, swollen.
“Oh my,” Claire murmurs.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“He’s not fine,” Al says. “He’s lucky they didn’t kill him.”
“There was a fight?” Adele asks.
“Apparently I resisted arrest.”
“The police did this to you?” I say, finding my voice.
“You should see his ribs,” Al says.
“Good thing they had me in handcuffs.”
He flinches as Adele dabs at his wounds, nodding as she whispers that it’s almost over. He eases up his shirt. Bruises against his brown skin, a gash at his ribs.
Rudy pulls at my hair, touches the tip of his nose with his tongue, a trick. I want to be light and playful for him, but Lionel’s face, Lionel’s ribs … the fear coursing through the room.
“Look.” Al’s voice is hushed, strained. “It’s gotten to the point that he can’t cross the street without a cop coming after him. It’s time. Can’t drag this out anymore.”
“Let’s take a minute now,” Bernard says. “Let’s think. We all care about Lionel, no one wants to see him suffer more than he already has. And at the same time, we’re so close. We’ve been working hard for this, all three of us. Shame to walk away without the full payment in our pockets.”
“I’m trying to explain it to all of you,” Al says, voice rising. “They have a target on his back.”
Rudy starts to cry. “We need that money,” Adele says, taking him from me. “I know we need it. But Al’s right. Lionel’s been going through this for years. We need money but we need each other more.”
“But—” Claire says.
“Wait.” Bernard’s lifting a finger, eyes squinting, working something out.
Then he gives himself a nod. “Two days,” he says.
“We go over to the mill today, finish the hand carving and detail sanding on the banquet tables. Will probably take us into tomorrow morning, but we can go without sleep if we need to. Tomorrow, first thing, we’ll do the assembly.
I know a craftsman who can apply the French polish on all the tables.
I’ll call him from the shop. A job like this—no way he’ll turn it down.
We’ll have to pay him well, though. Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll go over everything with him and his guys, make sure they understand exactly what they’re taking on and what the expectations are.
Next morning, we get on the train. And we hope to God they send us our share of the money when they collect it. ”
“Forty-eight hours,” Al says. “All right. We’re on the morning train day after tomorrow.”
My sisters exchange one of their private looks. There’s an alarm in my body. “We need to visit Papa’s grave,” I say. “We need to say goodbye.”
Adele winces. “Honey, I wish we could. But there’s no time to go all the way to Jackson and back with just two days to pack and prepare.”
“Don’t you see everything we have left to do?” Claire says. “And I’d rather remember Papa how he was. Too sad, to go to that place. Nobody wants that.”
“I want it.”
Lionel, quiet all this time, opens his swollen eyes and says, “I’ll borrow a car. I’ll take you.”
“No,” Claire says. “Lionel’s staying here.”
“Claire,” Lionel says. “I know you’re the oldest sister, and I really do respect that, but last I checked you weren’t my mother.”
Claire goes cold. “Al, this is your mess to handle.”
Al runs a hand over his mouth, gaze shifting from me to Lionel. “Whose car?”
“Petey’s.”
“He have a clean record?”
“As a whistle.”
Claire shakes her head, keeps shaking it.
Al ignores her. “Might not be a bad idea to get you out of town. You’re gonna need to lay low today, ice those ribs, so we get a sense of what the damage is.
We’ll accept your help in the morning for the assembly if you can handle it. In the afternoon, you can take Odette.”
“Thank you,” I say to Lionel. He tries to smile at me. “Thank you,” I say to Al. He winks.
“I don’t know what we’ll tell Maman,” Claire says.
“Claire, it’s Odette’s choice,” Adele says. “How about we let it be? We have plenty to worry about already. I don’t see why we need to tell Maman anything.”
Back in the Laurent house, Hattie’s lingering in the kitchen. She’s been waiting for me. “We’re leaving the morning after next,” I tell her.
“Thought it might be something like that.”
We stay together in the kitchen, saying nothing, just looking at each other. And then she goes downstairs.
In Cyril’s room, I pack my suitcase, fitting as much as I can. I press my ear against the worn floorboards, listen for the sewing, humming and stopping. Humming and stopping. I lie on my belly with my eyes closed, palms open against the floor.
Later, at the table, I tell Mama and Papa Laurent that it’s our last dinner together.
They hug me tearfully, say it hurts but they know it’s right.
“You’ll make the rounds tomorrow?” Mama Laurent says.
We’re all familiar with the knocks at the door, classmates and cousins and old friends saying they’ll see us again sometime when most often it’s farewell for good.
In the morning, Hattie already downstairs in her sewing room, I pause on the front steps, struck by the sensation that I’m in a play with no audience.
I talk to no one, seek nobody out. I walk through the Lower Garden District to Magazine Street, run my fingers against the glass of Bill’s old studio, papered over from the inside.
I walk past shotgun houses and mansions and shops, under oak trees, through the cemetery.
Gust and rattle of the streetcar. Waft of sweetness from Lorraine’s Bakery.
One last beignet, powdered sugar on my fingers.
Across from the shop, three colored children play music on the stoop of a bright-yellow house with turquoise trim.
A boy with a drum, a girl with a trumpet, another girl singing with a voice louder and stronger than seems possible for her age.
Al’s voice in my head: “Our birthplace is the birthplace of jazz.”