Ten
WINTER SWEEPS IN, THE CHANGE so subtle I can barely feel it.
A quiet Christmas. New Year’s streamers in the coworkers’ lounge.
Claire joins us for dinner again. She shows up at the house with a bright bouquet and a cheerfulness that instructs us how to treat her.
We won’t speak another word about what happened.
We’ll go on as we always have. Weeks pass and I study her for hints of blame or resentment.
She acts no differently toward me than she did before, and I stop watching her quite so closely.
Each payday, through the winter and into spring, I go to the bank and cash my check, deposit a quarter into Al’s mortgage account, put half of what remains into a shoebox in my closet, keep the other half for household groceries, clothing for Clément and me, occasional drinks or dinners out with the Finishing girls.
At work, during lunches and coffee breaks, I interview everyone I meet on where they live, how they manage it.
Janine and her cousin share a one-bedroom apartment off Wilshire, but in two months her cousin’s moving out and the place will be all Janine’s.
“I can’t wait,” she says. “Right now, my so-called room is a Murphy bed directly across from the front door. Impossible to get any privacy at all. It’s going to feel like a palace once it’s all mine. ”
“And you’ll be able to afford it all right?”
“It’ll be a stretch. You girls might have to buy my drinks now and then.”
Ivy lives at home with her parents. “It’s fine,” she says, tapping her cigarette on the ashtray, sipping her coffee. “I’m barely there anyway.”
Sally lives with her husband in a cottage behind a bigger house in Culver City. Before that, though, she shared a place with five other girls. “Chaos,” she says. “But the very best kind.”
One night in the spring, Lionel slips in right before dinner in his paint-splattered work clothes and tells us he has some news. He unfolds his napkin, lays it on his lap. “I just signed a lease to an apartment.”
Envy flares in my chest.
Adele beams. “You don’t say.”
“Well, that is big news,” Claire says, and Al claps him on the back.
“Nice job, brother. Nicely done. Tell us all about it.”
Lionel glances at me. I’m overcome, can’t even smile. The money in my shoebox, still not close to enough, no matter how much or how hard I work.
“It’s nothing special,” he says. I can tell he’s downplaying it for me, hate that I’m feeling this way.
“When’s moving day?” I finally manage.
“I already got the keys. This weekend, maybe? A friend’s giving me his old sofa. Okay if I take the bed, or do you need it?”
“It’s yours,” Adele says. “No need for a bed in a den.”
Later, after the dishes are washed, I find Lionel out back. “A friend of a friend knew about the place,” he says. “Sort of dropped into my lap.”
“How’d you save enough money?”
“The jobs I’ve been getting pay decently.” He’s been fixing up houses, building decks, painting walls. “How much have you saved?”
“Not enough. It isn’t just rent and deposit money I’ll need. I want a car, too. And a safety net.”
Lionel considers it. “If you find a place close by, you could put off the car for a while and still ride to the plant with Al and Bernard.”
“That’s a good point,” Adele says, joining us. “Two cars. Three of you commuting to the same place. It works out, doesn’t it?”
“But then again, it will be a lot harder to save for a car once you’re paying monthly rent,” Lionel says.
It’s true. I look at the listings in the paper each day. “Modest two-bedroom apartments run around ninety dollars a month. That would leave me with only sixty for everything else.”
Adele shrugs. “It’s just a matter of priorities. What’s the most important? A car, when you already have access to two of them that you can borrow anytime, or a little home of your own for you and Clément?”
Lionel’s amused, shooting me a look.
“So you want me out is what you’re saying.”
“No, no!” Adele says. “I just want what you want. I’m making sure you know you’ll have our help and support even after you move out.”
“Sorry, Odette. I started something that I can’t take back. Now they’re dreaming of a den and an extra bedroom for the kids.”
Adele denies it, flustered. But it’s out in the open, the way she really feels. We’re in alignment then, even though it stings.
On Friday evening, the men move the furniture and my sisters and I busy ourselves inside Lionel’s new apartment, lining the old kitchen drawers, scrubbing the place clean.
“These bedroom curtains are two inches too short,” Claire says, and the next day she has two new curtains for him, folded neatly, made of extra yardage from her living room drapes.
Adele and I stand on chairs to hang them, Claire directing us from below.
Afterward, she leads the children in a game.
They’re eager, focused, listening to her instructions, watching her, and following along.
It moves me so much that I can’t help but tell her later, when we’re alone in the kitchen, no one else in earshot.
“It’s unfair,” I say. “You’re so good and natural with children. Your life is all set up—”
“Stop,” she says. “I can’t talk about this.” Her eyes are wide and full of tears. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, chastened. “I’m sorry.”
She nods vigorously, like she’s convincing herself of something. She squeezes my hand—I’m forgiven—and we leave the kitchen to find the others.
They’re out front of the building, talking on the stoop. Clément runs over when he sees me. “Can we go, Mommy? Can we go with Uncle Lionel?”
“Go where?”
“On an adventure,” Lionel says. “Got a couple hours to spare?”
“Don’t you want to come to the Les Dames Amis social tonight?
” Adele asks, but I don’t. They convinced me to go with them once.
We met in the private room of a restaurant on Jefferson Avenue where the Creole businesses cluster.
It was the three of us among a group of women from back home, their made-up faces various shades of brown, their voices drawling and sweet. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
“I asked Bea,” Claire says. “She said she’d love to have you as a guest. You still have a standing invitation to join.”
“You know how I like to give Clément my attention on the weekends,” I say.
Adele shrugs. Claire purses her lips. Lionel grabs his keys and Clément and I slip into his car.
“You’re choosing me over Les Dames Amis?” Lionel says once we’re on the road. “Even though Bea herself would love to have you?”
“They talk about her like she’s the queen.”
“Pretty sure that of Les Dames Amis, she is.”
Clément climbs onto my lap, sets his hands on the dashboard, peering out the window. “When will we get there?”
“It’s gonna be a while, little man,” Lionel says. “We’re driving to where the rich people live.”
Half an hour later, a white man in a polo shirt and blue jeans waters his front lawn, unsmiling, as we climb out of the car.
Clément sticks close to my side, arm tight around my leg.
“What are we doing here?” he asks in a small voice.
Maybe my apprehension is catching. Or maybe he understands enough about the world already to know that we’re out of place.
Lionel sets his palm atop Clément’s curls. “We’re gonna see some birds do tricks,” he says.
“What kind of birds?”
“Pigeons.”
I push Lionel with my elbow, keep my voice low so only he can hear me. “You drove us all this way for pigeons?”
“Not just any pigeons. You’ll see.” He leads us up the walk with a skip in his step, hands in his back pockets, calling, “Hey there, J.J.,” as though he and this man are friends.
J.J. stiffens, doesn’t return the greeting.
Lionel should know better. There’s an invisible, unspoken, ever-shifting set of rules here.
Al learned it first. We were newly off the train and he went to see about a job as a clerk in a record store.
“True, we are hiring,” the man behind the counter had said.
“But we aren’t hiring you.” Al was crestfallen.
He almost didn’t answer the Columbia want ad from the next week’s paper.
How were any of us to know, in this so-called city of opportunity, given the absence of Whites Only signs, given the vast array of its residents’ skin tones, given the dizzying number of languages spoken on the streets, just who exactly the opportunities were for?
Even our Compton neighborhood had, just a couple years before, seen a cross burned on a colored grandmother’s lawn.
And here Lionel is now, leaning casually against the shiny railing of this white man’s front steps. Up to me, to put our host at ease. “Thanks so much for having us, Mr.…?”
He relaxes at the question. A flicker of a smile, taking me in. “Baker.”
“Mr. J.J. Baker is going to show us some birds. They around back?”
“They are. I’ll take you there soon as I finish up watering.”
The lawn looks well soaked to me, but J.J.
goes over it all again. Lionel paces the house’s perimeter, peeks over the fence to the backyard.
Eventually, J.J. shuts off the water, makes a show of winding the hose and hanging it up, just so.
Clément tugs on my sleeve. “Mommy, pick me up.” I heave him onto my hip.
Finally, J.J. unlatches the side gate and we follow him to a freestanding shed at the far end of the lawn.
Somewhere close, birds coo and patter and flap.
As we get nearer, I see them behind the wire and wood, stepping side to side and craning their necks, fluffing their feathers, pale gray and cream and charcoal and blue.
“Wow!” Clément says, squirming in my arms to get a better look.
“Wow is right, little man. These are some fine birds.”
“Since when are you interested in all this?” I ask Lionel.
“The owner of the house I’m working on raises pigeons like these. We watched them fly one day and it was a sight. Mr. J.J. was there, got talking to him. Haven’t gotten the birds out of my mind since.”