The House on Harbor Hill

by Shelly Stratton

  “I’d be happy to!”

  A silence fell between them again.

  “Well, I’ll just . . . I’ll just grab Maggie and settle in, I guess.” Tracey started to walk toward the living room but paused to turn back and look at the opened front door. She pointed toward her minivan parked in the driveway. Aidan was currently unloading boxes from the rear. “Do you think he needs help with some of that stuff?”

  “Even if he did, he wouldn’t let you help him,” Delilah said, reaching down to retrieve the dish towel Caleb had knocked out of her hands when he greeted her. “Don’t worry about it. Just go on and get yourself freshened up and set up your room the way you want it.”

  Tracey nodded absently before finally breaking her gaze from the driveway. She headed into the living room to retrieve Maggie.

  Delilah walked across the foyer and through the opened door. Aidan had just picked up one of the boxes from the asphalt. He started to walk toward the stairs.

  “Make sure to be careful with her things,” she admonished, making him roll his eyes heavenward as he carefully balanced the box in his arms.

  “I know what I’m doing. Do you know how many times I’ve had to move in boxes in the past four years?” he asked between huffs of breath as he climbed the last step. “More times than I can count! I could do this in my sleep.”

  She stepped aside to let him through the doorway.

  “Have you taken your pill today?” he asked, keeping his tone nonchalant, though he knew the very question went over her like sandpaper.

  He was referring to the pills the psychiatrist had prescribed for her. She’d explained to the doctor—a middle-aged woman with short gray hair and an indulgent smile—what had happened in the pantry and how she occasionally heard a voice that made her uneasy. The psychiatrist had nodded and listened patiently for a half an hour before prescribing Klonopin for Delilah’s “panic attacks.” Delilah had been taking the medication for about a week, but she didn’t like it. It made her dizzy when she climbed the stairs and made her want to take more naps than Bruce.

  “I’ll take it later,” she mumbled, turning back around to head to the kitchen to put her yeast biscuits in the oven.

  He stopped in his tracks in front of the stairs leading to the second floor.

  “Dee, you need to take your pill. There was no point in the doctor prescribing it for you if—”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m some child, Aidan.”

  “Then don’t act like one!” he ordered, dropping the box to the floor.

  “You better not have broken anything in there,” she said, pointing at the box. She watched as Aidan closed his eyes, took a deep breath like he was counting to ten, then opened his eyes again.

  “Please just take the damn pill. I don’t want to have to worry about you. All right?”

  Delilah didn’t respond.

  “You remember our deal, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I remember. I went there just like you asked me too, didn’t I?”

  “And you also have to follow the doctor’s orders! Don’t pretend like that wasn’t part of the deal too.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I can still tell her the truth, Dee.”

  Delilah clenched her jaw. She pushed her way past him and walked up the stairs, pausing at the top and holding onto the newel post when the dizzy spell struck her. She waited a few seconds for it to wane to the point where it was at least bearable, then placed one shaky foot in front of the other as she headed down the hall to her bedroom. She walked past her four-poster bed and into the en suite bathroom with its high ceiling and sunken tub. She paused in front of the bathroom mirror and watched as her reflection spun around like a slow-moving carousel and then, finally, mercifully settled.

  There I am.

  She gazed at the constellation of moles along her cheeks, chin, and neck, the wrinkles framing her mouth, and her big dark eyes. She was sixty-seven, and yet she felt and looked much older. She could remember her face when she was a young woman of seventeen. She had once thought of herself as pretty. Many men had too—but not anymore.

  A hard life will do that to you, she told herself. Besides, it’s not like you’re entering the Miss America Pageant anytime soon! What judge’s eye are you trying to catch?

  She opened the mirror, revealing the shelves of her medicine cabinet. She removed the bottle of Klonopin and shook one pill into her hand. It was blue and circular and stood out against the pale skin of her palm. She remembered a similar pill from long ago, but that one hadn’t made her dizzy.

  Delilah sighed.

  Maybe she could lie to Aidan and tell him she took it. It’s not like he would know the difference. And it’s not like she really needed the damn thing. She was fine. He was just overreacting, that’s all.

  She stared at the pill again.

  “Just go on and take it,” a voice ordered, startling her and making her almost drop the pill into the sink.

  This voice didn’t sound like the one she was used to hearing. It sounded very different—female, almost playful.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Oh, go on, Dee! It ain’t gonna hurt you!” the voice assured.

  “Agnes?” Delilah breathed. “Is that . . . is that you?”

  The voice didn’t answer.

  Delilah hesitated for a second longer before she closed her eyes, popped the pill into her mouth, and swallowed.

  Part II

  Chevy Chase, Maryland

  May 1968

  CHAPTER 12

  “Just go on and take it,” Agnes whispers, stopping me just before we step into the kitchen, pinching a little blue pill between her fingers.

  I squint down at it and frown. “What is that?”

  “Oh, go on, Dee! It ain’t gonna hurt you!” she says, then drops her voice to a whisper. “Miss Mindy takes them all the time. I take it sometimes too when she’s driving me up a wall!” She winks and presses the pill into the palm of my hand before closing my fingers over it.

  “You stole this? You stole it from Miss Mindy?”

  Agnes waves off my worry.

  “She’s got plenty more where that came from. Just take it, girl! It’ll calm you down, and the way you’re actin’ right now, you’ll need all the help you can get! You’re never gonna make it through this dinner, and I can’t do it all by myself. Take it! It’s good for you. It’s like vitamins.”

  Vitamins?

  I hesitate a few more seconds before I raise the pill to my mouth. I drop it on my tongue, close my eyes, and swallow. I feel the muscles working along my throat as it slides its way down. As soon as it does, I regret what I’ve done. I want to spit the chalky taste out of my mouth.

  Lord, what did I let her talk me into?

  “Give it about thirty minutes to work. You’ll be all right.”

  Agnes tightens the ribbon of her stiff white apron, then pushes the kitchen door open. She steps inside, and I trail in behind her. Agnes beelines to one of the counters, where a line of sparkling serving trays covered with lace are arranged. They look as pretty as wrapped presents under a Christmas tree.

  “Now when you walk in there, you hold the tray like this. See?” Agnes says, lifting one of the sterling silver trays and holding it in front of her, clutching it in both hands about half a foot away from her chest and midway down her body.

  I nod—though I’m still a little confused.

  I thought I would be holding the tray like the waitresses at the Woolworth’s Downtown I sometimes see through the windows on 14th Street—or even like the waiters in picture shows who wear tuxedoes and bow ties. Those waiters always balance the tray in the air over their heads like they’re performing a circus act.

  But I don’t tell her that. The question sounds silly before it even comes out of my mouth. Plus, I figure Agnes has to know what she’s talking about. Agnes has been serving white folks a lot longer than me—since she’d left school at fourteen to become a maid and hel
p her mama take care of a family of eight. Those days of scrubbing someone else’s toilet, ironing their clothes, and changing their children’s soiled diapers seem to have aged Agnes beyond her twenty-six years, filling her head with fifty years’ worth of knowing. But I just turned seventeen two months ago and have been serving as a maid in the Williams household for only two weeks. Tonight is the first time I’ll be helping with one of their cocktail parties, and I feel like I’m about to pee my pants.

  “You listening, Dee?” Agnes barks at me.

  I nod. I nod so hard my eyes almost roll. “Y-y-yes, I’m listening.”

  I’m also trying not to be so scared of all the new things around me: the feel of the cardboard-like collar of my dress uniform pressing into my neck, the opening and slamming shut of the oven door over and over again, and the laughter and music just beyond the kitchen. But I can’t keep the fear pushed down for long. It is all too much. My fear is like one of the pots on the oven whose lid clatters rhythmically; it’s threatening to boil over. “Like I said . . . when you wanna offer them something to drink, you don’t say, ‘Excuse me. Would you like some refreshments?’ or ‘Would you like something to drink, sir?’” Agnes says in an exaggerated British accent, waving her hand in the air like a queen greeting her peasants.

  Her dark eyes go earnest again as she loads glass after glass onto one of the silver trays. She reaches for the opened bottle of champagne. “You don’t say a damn thing! You just stand there and wait for them to look at you. They’ll shake their head or nod. Then when they done, you move on to the next.”

  “B-but what if they’re blind?” I ask.

  Agnes stops pouring the champagne and eyes me. “What?”

  “What if they’re blind? What if they can’t see you?”

  The cook—a broad-backed woman ornerier than the devil himself, named Roberta—pauses midway in opening the oven yet again to turn and shake her head at me.

  I can tell she’s been half listening to our conversation this whole time.

  “Lord, that chile got all the book learnin’ in the world and don’t have a lick of sense!” Roberta says.

  By “book learnin’,” Roberta means my high school diploma and the books I keep tucked in my apron pocket to read whenever I have downtime or when I get bored. Tonight, I’ve got a beat-up copy of Great Expectations.

  But “all the book learnin’” hasn’t done me a bit of good. I’m still in the same place as Agnes and Roberta. I’m still a servant just like they are—though I had hoped . . . had once dreamed of being a lot more than that. But here I am.

  “What do you mean what if they’re blind?” Agnes asks. “What if who’s blind?”

  “Th-the party guest,” I say, feeling even more flustered by Agnes and Roberta’s reaction, by the expressions on their faces. “What if they can’t see me and my tray because they’re blind? Should I say something then?”

  Agnes purses her lips and cocks an eyebrow. “Well, I ain’t never run across a blind party guest! I don’t think you got anything to worry about.”

  Roberta shakes her head, then lets out a rumbling laugh, making her bosom jiggle behind her pale blue uniform.

  “Agnes!” a voice suddenly booms from the doorway.

  Agnes, Roberta, and I turn to find Miss Mindy standing there. We instantly fall quiet and go still.

  Miss Mindy’s red hair is up tonight. It looks like a copper helmet. You could throw a plate at that thing and it wouldn’t move. She’s wearing an ice-blue cocktail dress with a diamond broach at the waist. The cocktail dress seems a size too big on her reed-thin frame, bagging at the bust, but I’ve heard that’s what white women like to look like nowadays—like they’re starving.

  I’ve always thought it peculiar that people who have so much money want to look like they can’t afford to buy food. And the Williamses have more money than most. Whereas many of the families in their neighborhood are lucky to have one housekeeper and maybe a driver, the Williamses have a driver, two maids, and a cook.

  “Everyone thinks it’s because Mr. Williams got a lot of money,” Agnes whispered to me one day as we were folding laundry. “But the one who really got all the money is his wife. She come from it, was born with it, and took it with her when she got married. That man wouldn’t have a pot to pee in if it weren’t for Miss Mindy!”

  “Our guests are starting to arrive, Agnes,” Miss Mindy says through pinched, frosted-pink lips. “Are you bringing out the drinks soon?”

  I watch as Agnes and Roberta shrink into themselves in Miss Mindy’s presence. Both shift their eyes away from her. Agnes even lowers her head.

  They are like the pages of one of my books fanned wide open, and then suddenly the covers are slapped closed by Miss Mindy’s pale, freckled hand.

  “Yes, Miss Mindy. We’ll be out there in just a minute,” Agnes answers in a small voice, losing all her boldness from earlier.

  Miss Mindy nods before giving a scant glance at me, seeing me for the first time since she came into the kitchen. “You make sure to follow Agnes’s lead. She knows the proper way to conduct herself on these occasions.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answer, lowering my gaze too and feeling myself shrinking.

  Miss Mindy steps through the doorway, letting the wooden door swing behind her.

  Agnes watches the door a second longer. When it closes, she lifts one of the trays and shoves it at me. “You heard what she said. Now go on and get out there! And remember everything I told you now!” she whispers shrilly.

  I grab the tray and head toward the kitchen door, nudging the door open with the tip of my borrowed shoes. They are already pinching my feet. Through the crack, I can see all the people standing around the Williamses’ living room—sitting on the sofa, hanging around the polished baby grand, and lingering near the windows. The champagne glasses on my tray start to rattle. I look down and realize my hands are shaking.

  “Go on!” Agnes hisses.

  She looks like she’s about to shove me through the door.

  “Chile, what are you waiting for?” Roberta calls to me.

  I take a deep breath and step through the door, holding my tray midway down my chest like Agnes showed me, praying I won’t mess up.

  And for the rest of the night, I try to remember everything Agnes told me. I whisper her words of warning to myself as I walk around the room with the tray.

  Don’t look them in the eye.

  Don’t walk by anyone with an empty glass and not offer to take it from them.

  And—for the love of the good Lord above—keep quiet, and speak only when they speak to you first!

  I do all right, I guess. Then one of the guests picks up a glass and sips some of the champagne and says, “Nice! Hey, what vintage is this anyway?”

  I look up and realize he’s talking to me. He nods and smacks his lip, taking another sip. He’s staring at me as though he expects me to say something back.

  He is a short man with thick black glasses, a bald head, and a big beaky nose. He has an accent from farther up north. He sounds an awful lot like the late President Kennedy—God rest his soul!

  I remember seeing the gold label on the champagne bottle as Agnes was pouring the glasses. It was a Champagne Grande Cuvée Grand Siècle 1965.

  I can’t pronounce the French words too well. I tried to teach myself some French after I read a few books with French phrases in them, but I haven’t gotten far. Still, he asked me a question. I could try to say the name of the champagne. I open my mouth to answer him, but then a woman beside him wearing white elbow gloves and thick eyeliner begins to laugh.

  “Like she would know!” the woman squeals before I can answer, slapping his shoulder. “ ‘What vintage is this?’ Phil, you’re such a hoot!”

  The man, Phil, turns and seems to blink at the woman in confusion before erupting into laughter too, like he knows what she’s been laughing at all along.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Guess I’ve already had too much hooch tonight!”


  I close my mouth. My cheeks and my neck feel hot—so hot I want to run into the kitchen, grab one of Roberta’s washcloths, douse it with cold water, and lay it on my face. I feel foolish . . . foolish for wanting to answer the man’s question, foolish for even bothering to try to learn French. When would I ever have to speak French? I am a maid and probably will always be one. Who was I fooling?

  The man and the woman stop laughing and return to whatever conversation they were having before I came along. Watching them, I feel my eyes start to sting. I slowly back away from the couple. As I get farther away, I can feel the pain in my chest expand like the distance from me to them. I stop walking when I bump into someone, brushing my shoulder against an arm.

  I turn around to find Miss Mindy glaring at me. She’s standing with a group of her friends, women who look a lot like her. They all have hair helmets of different shapes and sizes, dresses too baggy for their frames, and shrewd, scornful faces.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Mindy,” I blurt out. “I was just heading to the kitchen to—”

  My words taper off when I realize Miss Mindy is staring at me like I’ve just lost my mind.

  I’ve broken the first commandment; I spoke to one of the white folks without being spoken to first.

  Ashamed yet again, I rush toward the kitchen door, the glasses rattling on my tray louder than the steel wheels of a roller coaster.

  “She’s new. She came recommended, but it’s so hard to find good help nowadays,” I can hear Miss Mindy say before a few of her friends murmur in agreement.

  I shove the kitchen door open and see Agnes walking toward me with a tray of deviled eggs. Roberta is putting the finishing touches on the tiny sandwiches I’m supposed to take out next.

  “Just what do you think you doing?” Agnes asks me, her voice full of accusation. “Hey, there’s still full glasses on that tray. Get back out there!”

  I don’t answer her. Instead, I rush past her, almost tossing the champagne tray onto the counter. I run toward the door on the opposite side of the kitchen.

  “Did you hear her talking to you, gal?” Roberta shouts after me.