by Han Nolan
Mrs. Mahoney had smiled at Pip and frowned at me. Then she said, "Yes, I had Esther last year. I hope we're planning on a better performance this year, Miss Young."
"Yes, I hope you are, too," I said in all innocence, thinking she was talking about herself. I realized by the way she had arched her brow, that evil brow, and by the elbow poke Pip had given me that she had meant my performance and not hers, and I corrected myself. "I mean, yes, Mrs. Mahoney, I am."
I hated the third grade—both times. I hated that I wasn't even given a new teacher. Mrs. Mahoney was fat, which wouldn't have mattered if she had kept it to herself, but she liked to threaten to sit on us if we did anything wrong, so it mattered plenty, and it meant I was in constant danger of getting flattened. I think I would have ended up looking a lot like the dead squirrels I had sitting on my lap if it hadn't been for Pip running interference for me all the time. I knew I owed him a lot.
That's what I was thinking, that I owed him a lot, when Auntie Pie said, "It looked to me like the two of you were fighting. Why did he run off like that?"
Auntie Pie had begun backing the car down the road and I was afraid to answer her because I didn't want to break her concentration.
I twisted around in my seat and looked out the back so that I could help navigate and look out for Pip, who most likely took the shortcut through the woods, since I didn't see him anywhere on the road.
"Well?" Auntie Pie said.
"Well, he's mad at me. I think I told him to get lost—kind of."
"Why would you do that?"
Auntie Pie was heading for a telephone pole, so I said, "Pole. Pole. Pole!" She swerved just in time and we were back on the road and she was still waiting for my answer.
"I don't know why I did it." I shrugged. "I guess I just want this summer to be different. I want to be different. This is my first summer in forever that I'm free. No tutors and no homework. If I hang out with Pip all the time—I don't know. That's my old life. He's part of my childhood. I need to move on from that."
"Just like that?" Auntie Pie took her hand from the wheel and snapped her fingers.
"Well..." I shrugged. "Laura and Kathy have cut me off just like that." I snapped my fingers. "Or at least they're trying to. They think I'm too tomboy or something—too immature."
"Everybody matures at their own rate, Esther. Don't be in such a hurry; your time will come." Auntie Pie took a hand off the steering wheel and patted my knee. We rolled back onto the side of the road and headed toward the stone wall that ran the length of our property. I said, "Wall. Wall. Wall!" Auntie Pie jerked the wheel just in time, and we didn't speak again until we were safely home.
At home, Auntie Pie and I carried the box of squirrels into the gatehouse that stands at the entrance to our property just inside an enormous iron gate.
While Auntie Pie prepared the food for the hawks and let her pet skunk, Earl, out of its cage to run around, I cleaned the hawk squirt off the wall and thought about Pip and what he had said about nobody liking me. When I looked up, still deep in thought, I noticed through the side window the local taxi that waits for passengers down at our train station enter through the gate and roll down our driveway.
Auntie Pie saw it, too.
"Is that him?" she asked, peering out the window at the taxi. "Is that the killer? He's early. First he's a day late, now he's two hours early." She scooted the skunk back into its cage, wiped her hands on her dress, and said, "We're all going to be murdered in our sleep."
I said, "But it can't be him; I'm not dressed yet." I looked down at my dirty plaid Bermuda shorts and my green striped shirt. In my fantasy of our first meeting, I had imagined myself in a more exotic-looking affair. I had imagined myself wearing something out of Beatrice Bonham's closet, something with a lot of fluff and frill. I had pictured myself wearing makeup, with curled hair and high heels. I didn't own any makeup or high-heeled shoes, and the most exotic thing I did own was a black turtleneck leotard that zipped up the back, a leftover from Mother's attempt to either turn me into a ballerina or just plain humiliate me by signing me up to take classes in the city with the School of American Ballet. Mother was on the board there, so they had to take me. I lasted six years (six years!) before Mr. Balanchine himself told my mother that it was pointless: I did not have the body of a ballerina; however Stewart and Sophia, my brother and sister, were beautiful dancers, of course.
Auntie Pie heard my comment about not being dressed and said, "We've got a cold-blooded killer in our midst and you're talking about your clothes?"
"Mother and Dad said he didn't do it," I replied, placing a towel on the side of the hawk cage closest to the wall, trying to finish up so I could get to the window and see for myself what our new guest looked like.
"Mother said he is just a victim of prejudice and circumstance," I added.
I went over to the window, with my heart racing, and watched as a tall black person climbed out of the taxi and looked around.
"There he is," I said. I took a deep breath and let it out, fogging up the window. I had to wipe it down to see him again.
"Uh-huh, that's him," Auntie Pie said.
The murderer, the Negro boy, the boy I told everyone I was going to have a romance with, looked like a full-grown man standing out there in our driveway. He was dressed in tan pants, a white shirt, brown bow tie, and a straw hat. No boy I knew dressed like that.
I saw him gazing up at the house and whistling to himself, and I knew he was surprised by the size of our house.
Normally, seeing someone admiring our house would give me a real thrill, because if you asked me what I was most proud of about myself, it would be that I lived in this wonderful mansion with my famous director father and my beautiful mother and my gifted brother and sister, but right then I was far too nervous to be thrilled.
I glanced at Auntie Pie, then returned to the window. "Well, all right, then," I said. "I guess we ought to go greet him. Nobody else is home except Beatrice, and she's in no shape to see him. She only got home this morning. She'll be sleeping it off till four at least."
Auntie Pie backed away from the window. "You go ahead, and I'll stay behind and keep watch over things," she said, picking up Roily Raccoon, then lifting him to examine his bandaged front paw. Her voice sounded shaky. "Anyway, I have to go move the car before your parents get back and find out I drove it."
I turned around to face my aunt. She's really my great-aunt, and even though she's only in her sixties, she acts much older and wears dresses and clunky shoes that have got room for her bunions, with thick stockings she wears rolled down to her knees that she orders from some old-lady catalog. She looks just like an old granny, except for her face, which doesn't have a wrinkle in it.
I said, "You're scared, Auntie Pie. You're scared of a poor boy down on his luck." I moved over to the door and one of the hawks screamed, which, when it's right in your ear, is bloodcurdling.
I hunched up my shoulders against the noise and opened the door. "He's the grandson of Mother's maid from childhood and the son of Mother's oldest best friend. You've heard her talk of her maid Cassie. This is her grandson." I knew she knew all this, but sometimes she forgot things, and anyway, I needed to say those things out loud to reassure myself.
Both hawks screamed when I said grandson, and Auntie Pie and I both jumped.
Then she said over the screams, her voice sounding irritated, "I know who he is. And just because he's from a family of good women, it doesn't mean a thing. He can still be a killer—a cold-blooded killer. You of all people ought to know families don't come out just alike."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, not really wanting an answer. I knew all too well that I was the one in our family who didn't come out right.
Auntie Pie ignored my question and said, "Oh all right, I'll go with you to meet this young man. I guess I can't let you go out there by yourself."
We stepped out of the gatehouse together and saw that the taxi had gone and Mr. King-Roy Johnson was nowhere in sight.
THREE
"Where did he go?" I asked. I ran toward the house.
"I see his suitcase on the porch," Auntie Pie called after me.
I ran up onto the porch and turned around. I called out, "Mr. Johnson? Mr. King-Roy Johnson. Hello. We're here on the porch."
Auntie Pie took her time climbing the steps of the porch, then said, "Why don't you look inside and I'll keep a watch out here."
I nodded and went inside the house. I stood in the foyer and called out, "King-Roy Johnson? Mr. Johnson, are you here?"
"Yes, ma'am, I'm here."
I heard his voice coming from the direction of the ballroom. I ran through the living room and solarium and saw that the ballroom doors were open. We always kept them closed because it was the coldest room in the winter and the warmest room in the summer. I knew King-Roy Johnson had to be in there. I hesitated a second before entering, thinking I should wait for Auntie Pie, but then I thought that maybe my hesitation was some kind of sign of being prejudiced against murderers or black people, so I went on inside and found Mr. Johnson standing in the middle of the room, staring at all our stained-glass windows.
He turned around when he heard me come in, and the first thing that struck me was that he looked so bright and handsome—not movie-star handsome but still quite handsome. His skin was a pretty copper color, and his face was so smooth-looking I thought maybe he hadn't started shaving yet. He was tall and slender, maybe six feet tall, and he had a nice broad forehead and large, soft brown eyes and a nose that kind of spread out across his face a bit too much and a pretty mouth, full and well shaped. Altogether his face looked gentle and quiet like a pond in the still of the day. He wore his hair cut close to his head, and he had on horn-rimmed glasses that made him look smart. Seeing him, King-Roy Johnson, standing before me, looking every bit like my fantasy of him, made me want to giggle. I felt relief or joy or something rising up in my chest, and I turned away. I wanted to leave, to run get Auntie Pie so I could hide behind her and think about my feelings more, but King-Roy Johnson called me back.
"Hey," he said. "I'm King-Roy Johnson; who are you?"
I turned back around and stepped forward and held out my hand for him to shake. I said, "I'm Esther. I'm Esther Young, and this—this is my house."
King-Roy smiled this easy kind of smile, not forced, and shook my hand. "Pleased to meet you, Miz Esther."
I waved my hand and blushed. "Oh, you can just call me Esther."
"Nice," King-Roy said, and I didn't know what was nice—my name or that he could just call me Esther without the Miss.
King-Roy crossed his arms in front of him and looked first to one side of him, then to the other. He said, "Is this apartments or a hotel or what?"
"It's my parents' house."
He shook his head. "It can't be just one house, can it?"
King-Roy's voice sounded smooth like drinking a thick chocolate shake. It was soft and southern—real mellow, like his face. He was all-over mellow. I had never had a fantasy of mine come true, not even a little bit of one, but here was this King-Roy, so handsome and perfect I didn't know what to do. I wanted him to think I was smart and beautiful and glamorous, because that was the other part of my fantasy.
I said, "Lots of people think our house is the college. There's one just down the road. The same architect built both the college and our house, so they look a lot alike—both Tudor style. It's just down the road—the college is." I realized I sounded like a dope, but I couldn't help myself.
"We get new college kids coming here all the time who just walk into the house thinking they've arrived at the college. I guess that's what you did? Just walked in thinking it was a hotel?" I laughed at this, using a practiced Katharine Hepburn kind of laugh, a toss-it-over-your shoulders kind of laugh, and Mr. King-Roy Johnson gave me his easy smile again but didn't answer my question.
I returned his smile, but I felt stupid for laughing the way I did. I could feel its phoniness echoing in my ears. When I had practiced it in my room, imagining our first meeting, with me in one of Beatrice's frilly dresses, it had sounded much better.
"So just one family lives here?" He turned around with his arms held out, taking in the whole of our ballroom.
I looked around. The room was huge, and it was rectangular, with a highly polished wooden floor and rows of leaded, diamond-patterned windows with stained-glass panels at the top. It was, in my mind, a very English ballroom—the kind used in the evening after a day of fox hunting. One set of windows overlooked a stone porch that ran the length of the east wing of the house, and beyond that were the lily pool, rose garden, and pavilion.
"Just one family and a few guests," I said, nodding. "My parents like having company, so you're very welcome here," I said, thinking Mother would be pleased that I said this.
"Nice," King-Roy Johnson said.
I took a step toward him and said, "My mother and your mother were best friends, so ... so of course you're welcome."
"That's right, uh-huh, best friends," King-Roy said, his eyes scanning the stained-glass scenes of Viking ships again. He looked back at me. "So, how many rooms does this place have, anyway?"
"Thirty," I said. "Our library is just beyond those doors over there," I added, pointing to both sides of the fireplace. I shrugged, acting as if the house wasn't so grand, even though I knew it was.
"Thirty rooms!" King-Roy Johnson said, shaking his head and peering into the library. "And I bet every one of 'em's as big as most people's whole house." He turned to look at me, then said, "Just between you and me, I'm not so sure how comfortable I'm gon' be staying here."
"Oh it's plenty comfortable here," I said, not really sure what he meant. Then, to demonstrate, I suppose, what a comfortable, easygoing, fun place our house was, I kicked off my Keds and ran over to one of the window seats. My sister and brother each kept a pair of socks on the seat. I put my brother's pair on and then said to King-Roy Johnson, "Watch this." I pushed off from the window seat and skated across the floor. When I was just about to come to a stop, I fell onto my chest and slid some more on my stomach, with my arms spread out like wings on either side of me. I came to a stop in front of the fireplace.
King-Roy laughed an amused kind of laugh, and I couldn't tell if he enjoyed it or he thought I had just done the stupidest thing in the world.
I stood up, feeling pains in my breasts where I had landed too hard on the floor. I felt my face flood with heat and embarrassment again. This wasn't the way I had imagined myself behaving at all.
I tried to laugh it off with another Katharine Hepburn laugh, then said, "I'm really much too old for that. I'm almost fifteen. Way too old. I don't do floor skating anymore, but Stewart and Sophia still enjoy it. They're my brother and sister. Stewart's ten and Sophia's six going on thirty, as my mother likes to say. They're both really smart, and talented. They're brilliant, really. Mother's had their IQs tested."
"Is that right?" King-Roy Johnson said, his face going quiet again. "So are you brilliant, too?"
I looked out the windows that faced the front yard, where my favorite rock, a giant slab of white granite in the shape of a polar bear, poked out of the earth. The polar bear had been a sort of friend when I was little, an imaginary, rock friend, and I looked to it for comfort before turning back to King-Roy Johnson and answering him. "Well," I said, "Mother says we're all smart, but that's just Mother. She doesn't want to hurt my feelings." I went over to the window seat and pulled off the socks.
King-Roy Johnson walked across the floor, and I noticed his shoes had a good tap-tap sound to them. He stopped in front of me, with his arms crossed.
I looked up at him, and he had this gentle, angellike smile, and he said, "You ever think maybe she's telling the truth?"
"Oh, no," I said, looking up into his face and seeing my own round-faced reflection in his eyeglasses. "Not a chance. She never even bothered to have my intelligence tested like she did with Sophia and Stewart. I stayed back in school when I was in th
e third grade. That was before I got my eyes fixed. I used to have lots of trouble with reading because I was cross-eyed. No, I have no talents or anything." I sat on the window seat, leaning forward and looking down at the floor with my hands tucked under my thighs. I felt uncomfortable talking to a perfect stranger, a murderer, an eighteen-year-old black boy, about my eyes and staying back and all that. When I had imagined our first conversation together, I thought he would be telling me how mature I seemed for my age, how wise, but after my stint on the ballroom floor, that conversation was down the toilet and instead I was exposing my most tender, most sore, spot. I never talked about my staying back a year in school, not even at home—especially not at home.
King-Roy Johnson shook his head and said, "Shoot, anyone could have crossed eyes and still be smart, even if they were held back a year."
I looked down at my feet and noticed they looked sweaty and swollen. I brought my legs up and sat cross-legged on the window seat so he wouldn't notice. "I read really well, now, at least," I said. "I love to read." I looked up. "Do you love to read, King-Roy?"
"Well, I do now," he said, sitting down next to me and stretching his long legs out in front of him. "But I came late to reading. My brothers and sisters learned early when they were in the first or second grade, but it took me a long time. A real long time. I didn't even start speaking until I was ten years old."
"Did everybody think you were stupid?"
King-Roy said, "Yessum, there were plenty who thought I had no brains in my head, but my momma knew differently. She told all the teachers that she knew in her heart that I was smart and that when I got ready to talk and to read, why, I'd do it, and meanwhile she would read to me and talk to me like I was the smartest boy in town. And she was right. I turned ten, and a few weeks later I was talking up a blue streak and nobody could shut me up. Then I decided I might as well start reading, and sure enough, I could read just fine once I set my mind to it." King-Roy nodded to himself and looked across the room at the fireplace as though it were something different, someplace different. Then he said, "It was my momma having confidence and having faith in me that brought me around to talking and reading."