The House on Harbor Hill

by Shelly Stratton

  I pushed myself up to my elbows, closing my top and squinting up at him. “But it’s not raining outside.”

  He burst into laughter, confusing me even more.

  I tell myself all this fervor is because Cee has awakened something inside me I hadn’t known was there before, but that is only partly true. I also know that with each kiss, caress, and moan, I am proving something to myself: that Agnes doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’m not “just another colored girl” who will get tossed aside as soon as Cee gets what he wants out of me. What Cee and I have is lasting and real, I tell myself.

  And Cee must believe it too—that what we have is real—because he trusts me now. When Miss Mindy whispered to me two weeks ago that she needed money again, “Only three hundred this time,” and I asked Cee for the cash, he handed it over without question. He did it again on Tuesday after Miss Mindy told me she needed a hundred dollars to cover a bill. He tucked the folded money into my apron pocket before nuzzling my neck and nipping my earlobe.

  We are in love, and we are happy. I just wish Agnes could be happy for me.

  Agnes and I haven’t really spoken to one another since that day in the kitchen. When we do speak, it’s always a stilted conversation, like we’re strangers meeting for the first time on the street. Even Roberta has noticed the difference between us.

  “Why y’all two acting so funny?” she asked a few days ago while we were all eating lunch at the kitchenette table.

  We both shrugged in response. I returned my attention to my tuna sandwich and my paperback. Agnes continued to eat her slice of leftover meatloaf and green beans while watching her “stories” on the mini RCA that sits on the fridge.

  I miss Agnes—our easy conversations, our whispered gossip, and our laughter. I wonder if we will ever be like that again.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were in here,” I say when I walk into the living room and see her crouched on the rug on all fours with a scrub brush in her hand.

  She glances over her shoulder at me and wipes her brow with the back of her hand. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m almost done anyway.” She points down at a spot in the carpet. “I think somebody spilled some wine in here. Have to get it out before the party next week.”

  She gradually rises to her feet and drops the scrub brush into a water-filled bucket with a loud plunk. “Go ahead and vacuum,” she says, gesturing to the vacuum cleaner at my side and the cord looped in my hand. “Just be careful of the wet spot.”

  I nod and watch as Agnes walks across the room. When she brushes past me, I blurt out, “I’m sorry!”

  Agnes frowns and squints up at me. “Girl, what you apologizing for now?”

  “I’m sorry for what I said to you about . . . about you being nothing but a stupid maid. I didn’t mean that.”

  She sighs and nods. “I’m sorry too.” She gives a small smile and nudges me with her elbow. “And I don’t think you’re a dumb cow.”

  I laugh, relieved we are joking with one another again.

  “But I do think you’re making a mistake, Dee,” Agnes continues on, dropping her voice down to a whisper. “I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t warn you.”

  My shoulders slump. “There’s nothing to warn me against! We haven’t . . .”

  She drops her bucket to the floor and raises a finger to her lips, motioning for me to be quiet. She then grabs my hand and tugs me into the adjoining kitchen, which is empty.

  “We haven’t done anything but kiss,” I insist, picking up where I left off. “Well, maybe some kissing and rubbing, but I swear that’s it! He’s not—”

  “You haven’t done anything but kiss—now, but that’s how it starts. I know. I’ve been there.”

  “You’ve been there?” I frown. “What do you mean?”

  She sighs again, long and deep. I can see her rib cage go in and out under the cotton fabric of her uniform. “A . . . a long time ago, at my first job, I . . . I had something like this happen to me. I was fourteen, fresh outta the South Carolina backwater, and my mama got me a job at one of the big houses in Charleston. The Stanleys were old money, had a big staff. I was one of four maids, and sometimes I would help the nanny with the children since I was so young and I liked kids back then. That’s how I met Jimmy.” Her face suddenly changed. Her wistful smile disappeared. “He was their oldest. He was home from West Point that summer, and he flirted with me all the time! I didn’t know what to say or do. I knew it wasn’t right, but he was funny . . . charming. Pretty soon the flirting led to more and more and . . . the next thing I knew,” she shrugged her shoulders, “I was caught up.”

  I frown. “Caught up? You mean . . . you mean you were . . .”

  She nods so I don’t have to say the words.

  “I was so scared, Dee. Scared of what he would say. I told him I was in the family way. He said it wasn’t his. I told him it couldn’t be anyone else’s baby, but he wouldn’t believe me. He went back to West Point in September, and I heard he proposed to some gal who he’d been messin’ around with the whole time he was smiling up in my face. Some bucktoothed Louisiana debutante with a lot of money.” She sucked her teeth. “He acted like what happened between us never happened, and I . . . I tried to do the same thing, but of course, pretty soon I couldn’t pretend anymore. Everybody could see I was with child, and the Stanleys fired me.”

  My stomach drops.

  “I went back home to have my baby, but I couldn’t keep her,” she says, blinking back tears. One falls onto her cheek, and I can’t help but reach up and wipe it away for her. “I couldn’t afford no baby, and my mama already had plenty of other mouths to feed. So . . . I gave her away. I gave her away to a reverend and his wife who always wanted a girl.” She sniffs and finally looks at me. “And now they have one . . . with pretty ivory skin and chestnut curls.”

  I take a step back, almost bumping into the stove, because it feels like Agnes’s story has knocked me off-kilter. But she grabs my hand to keep me upright. She holds it tight.

  “I’m trying to warn you, Dee. I’m trying to warn you as a friend. They don’t think like us. They don’t act like us. Don’t let them use you like they used me. Don’t let them fool you!”

  CHAPTER 19

  I can’t get Agnes’s words out of my head. They echo throughout the afternoon as I work and well into the evening. I find myself lingering over them, picking at them like leftover meat from a chicken bone even as I climb into Cee’s car.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he whispers to me before leaning over to give me a kiss. His hand snakes inside my wool coat, and he fondles my breast through my uniform. I can smell the rum on his hot breath, and I recoil, shifting my head aside so his lips graze my cheek, not my mouth. I shove his hand away.

  “What the hell was that about?” he asks. He looks and sounds wounded, but I can’t work up the energy to care.

  “Nothin’,” I murmur, turning to look out the passenger-side window. “I’m just tired and want to go home, please.”

  He doesn’t reply. Instead, he turns up the volume of the radio. I see in the reflection how his green eyes narrow and his lips tighten. He doesn’t look as handsome or mannish to me anymore. He looks more like a sullen little boy who can’t get his way.

  He sits there like he’s waiting for something, maybe for me to apologize for how I’m treating him tonight, but I don’t. When I continue to ignore him, Cee turns and glares out the windshield. He pulls off, flooring the accelerator and making me slam back into my seat.

  We arrive at Auntie Mary’s house thirty minutes later, and I pause before I climb out of the car, listening to the idling engine.

  “Well? You getting out or what?” Cee asks, taking a puff from his cigarette.

  “I think . . . I think we need to take a break from each other,” I say in one exhalation.

  His cigarette goes limp. “Huh?”

  “I said I think we need to take a break from each other. We need to think things through, Cee
.”

  Because I am confused. Everything I thought I knew about us doesn’t seem certain anymore. Agnes and her story have made me question everything.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Think what through?” he shouts as I climb out of the car. “Wait! Wait! Damnit, Delilah, answer me!”

  “I said what I had to say!” I lean down so I am facing him eye to eye, so that he knows I am serious and will not budge. “We need a break. I need some air to . . . to breathe . . . to think. Just give me that—please? That’s all I’m asking!”

  I watch as his face goes from pale white to crimson. Even the tips of his ears burn bright. His green eyes narrow into slits like a viper’s. He bares his teeth.

  “I thought you were different, but you’re like every other stupid bitch I’ve ever wasted my time on!” he barks, stunning me into silence. He tosses his cigarette at me, making me flinch back from the car door. “You want a ‘break’? I’ll give you a goddamn break! I’ll break your goddamn nose for doing this shit to me! You owe me, Delilah!” He points at his chest. “And you’re out of your fuckin’ mind if you think I’m going to let you just—”

  I don’t wait for him to finish. I’ve heard enough. I slam the car door, turn, and keep walking even though I can hear him bellowing my name behind me, screaming for me to turn back around and look at him. I walk until I’m up the concrete stairs and the screen door closes behind me. I don’t look back.

  The next day, I tell Miss Mindy I’m not feeling well and ask to leave early.

  “You can’t finish out the day?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “No, ma’am. I feel too bad.” I say, rubbing my stomach, making a face.

  She blinks. Her face drains of all color. She points at my aproned waist.

  “You’re not . . . are you?”

  When I realize what she’s asking me, I grit my teeth.

  “No, ma’am. I got my menses yesterday, and they hurt awful bad. That’s all.”

  “Oh,” she says. Her shoulders sink with relief. She waves me away. “Well, if that’s the case, go ahead.”

  I take the bus home, though I know Cee will probably arrive at 5:40 on the nose to ferry me wherever I want to go despite what I told him last night and the horrible things he said to me. But it is not Cee fruitlessly waiting in the dark that I am thinking of as I stare out the bus window at the passing scenery of trees, buildings, and cars, at the people strolling by on the sidewalk.

  I’m thinking about Agnes’s little baby and the terrified fourteen-year-old girl Agnes must have been back then. That man had treated her like she didn’t matter, like she was a trifling plaything he’d gotten bored with. Agnes had been innocent and blind to the ways of the world when that happened to her. I am older and supposedly wiser but had wandered into the same trap. And it wasn’t just Cee who had ensnared me. Even Miss Mindy had latched her hooks into my back, dragging me along in whatever direction she wanted. But not anymore. I’m done with being pulled like a rag doll by them both.

  I manage to avoid Cee the next day and the day after that. When I spot his GTO waiting for me by my old bus stop, I turn around and walk to the stop six blocks away. I make sure I am busy with Agnes or Roberta whenever he comes to the house, seeking me out. I think Agnes senses what I’m doing and—bless her heart—tries to act as a buffer, as my interference.

  “Dee, can you help me take the clean laundry upstairs?” she asks cheerfully when Cee bursts into the laundry room on Wednesday, demanding to speak with me.

  “Dee, I think Miss Mindy is calling you,” she says when he tries to corner me in the living room on Friday while I am scrubbing the bay windows.

  When he stomps away, looking like steam will come out of his ears, Agnes shakes her head ruefully. “That boy looked mad enough to spit nails.”

  “Well, he can stay mad,” I mutter in reply, staring after him uneasily. “It’s over between us.”

  “You better be careful, Dee. I told you. Those white folks ain’t nothing but trouble!”

  But it doesn’t matter how careful you are. Trouble lies in wait; it will not leave you alone. I know this because when I leave for the day, Cee is parked at the end of the block. He’s perched on the hood of his GTO with a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth and his hands shoved into the pockets of his blue peacoat.

  “Delilah!” he calls out eagerly, waving when he spots me. He tosses his cigarette to the ground and crushes it under his heel.

  Oddly enough, he’s smiling. He doesn’t look angry anymore like he did earlier today. Instead of making me relieved, his smile makes me nervous. Like I’m staring at a waiting trap.

  “Cee,” I whisper, walking toward him, “what are you doin’ here?”

  “What do you mean what am I doing here?”

  “I mean why are you here?” I say tiredly, because I am tired. I’m damn near exhausted. He’s wearing me out. “I told you, we’re done.”

  “I just wanted to talk to you, Dee, and . . . and to apologize.”

  I stop short. I hadn’t expected to hear that. I watch as he shoves his hands into his pockets again and his eyes drift to the asphalt. He kicks aside a rock, and his lips form into a thin white line. There are bags under his eyes. He looks tired too.

  “I acted like an ass,” he says, scratching at the scruff along his chin. “I said those things to you, and I didn’t mean to. I wanted to apologize for that.”

  “Th-thank you.”

  “No thanks necessary. It needed to be said.” He finally raises his eyes to look at me again. He pushes himself away from the hood and takes halting steps toward me. “Look, Dee, I just . . . I just want to talk to you. I’m not asking you to do anything but talk.”

  Everything in my head says no. Tell him no, Dee!

  “Just so I understand,” he pleads, “because . . . because I don’t. I don’t understand why we were good one day and then the next day we weren’t.”

  Alarm bells are sounding, but the ache in his voice tears at me. It is even louder than the bells.

  “O-Okay,” I hear myself say, “we can talk . . . just for a bit.”

  There’s no harm in talking, is there? I look over my shoulder again at the Williams house and the light coming through the open windows. I expect to find Agnes shaking her head in disappointment, but thankfully she isn’t there.

  “We can’t do it here, though. We can drive around or go to—”

  “No, let me pick where we go. I want to take you somewhere nice. Somewhere special.”

  I frown at him apprehensively, and he holds up his hand, stopping me before I can voice any arguments. “Look, this may be the last time I get to do this. I’ve wanted to take you there before but never had the chance. Let me do it tonight. Please?”

  I sigh. “All right, Cee.”

  * * *

  Though he said he wanted to talk, for most of the ride, Cee doesn’t say anything. The radio announcer’s voice fills the void along with song after song, some of the saddest love tunes I swear I’ve heard in my entire life. His silence means I’m left with nothing else to do but stare out the car window and wonder where he’s taking me. At first, the streets zipping by us are ones I’ve seen every day for the past year. I would know what these streets look like—from every fence post to every mailbox—even if my eyes were closed. But gradually, the streets start to become less familiar, and I start getting anxious. We end up on a stretch of roadway where the houses become fewer in number, then disappear completely. Dense trees take up both sides of the road and start to cast shadows in the GTO’s headlights. I turn to Cee, peering at his face in the darkened car.

  “How much longer?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry. We’re almost there,” he says in an almost trancelike voice, like he’s half dreaming.

  That’s when I start to worry Cee is taking me to a place where we will do more than talk. A few minutes later, I swear I can hear water in the distance, a low rumble that grows louder. It sounds like the surf hitting
against a rock wall.

  “Cee, where are we going?” I ask, no longer able to keep the panic out of my voice.

  “I told you,” he mutters, not looking at me, “it’s a surprise.”

  “No!” I shout. “I wanna know where you’re taking me!”

  That’s when it finally comes into view.

  “We’re here,” he says as we pull to a stop on a gravel road leading to a house—the biggest house I’ve ever seen, even bigger than the Williams home. In the gauzy light of the full moon, I can see the peaked roof, six dormers, and cedar shingles. Rosebushes are planted near a wooden wraparound porch, and an extinguished gas lamp hangs near the screen door.

  At the sight of the house, all my anxiety disappears. I have never seen anything so lovely.

  “Where are we?” I ask breathlessly as he removes his car keys and throws the driver’s-side door open.

  “My beach house,” he says, then shrugs. “Well, it’s really my family’s beach house, but Mama said I inherited it when I turned twenty-one. It’s what Dad wanted. You should see it in the daylight. It’s even more beautiful than this.” I open my car door, and Cee offers me his hand. I take it and follow him down a winding stone path bordered by flowers and shrubs leading to the wooden stairs. As we walk, a light drizzle begins to fall. A lightning bolt etches its way across the heavens, and the entire sky is bright for a few seconds. I can see the entire yard and the vast water in the distance before a loud boom fills my ears and the world is only moonlight again.

  “We better get inside,” he says, and we climb the steps, taking them two at a time.

  When we reach the porch, he pulls back the screen, inserts a key, and shoves the front door open. He gestures for me to step in front of him, and I walk inside the beach house and gaze around me.

  The inside of the house is as nice as the outside, with exposed beam ceilings and cream-colored walls. But it is also empty. For the first time, I realize what folks mean when they say “quiet as a tomb” because the house is that. The creak of our feet against the floorboards sounds as loud as the thunder outside.