Everyone calls Marie-Jeanne the Madame of Althea House, and though we often see her granddaughter, Lana, coming and going, we rarely see Marie-Jeanne herself.
The brownstone’s two top floors are home to the twelve residents—split between seven rooms (four doubles, three singles) and the attic apartment where Marie-Jeanne lives—and the main floor has a spacious living and dining area, the rec room, and a big, bright kitchen. The basement is at once the staff’s office, laundry room, and nurses’ station. Althea House has been my refuge all summer, the only place I’ve gone other than work and home. Grandpop Ike likes it here, too, and he hasn’t liked much of anything since Granny Zora died in January, so that’s really saying something.
I flop onto the big L-shaped couch and inspect the sole of my boots. The rubber doesn’t seem to be melted and that feels like some kind of small miracle.
“After the lights went out and everyone started to panic, Mimi thought it would be a good idea to try to maintain some of the activities she’d already planned for the evening. You know, to keep everyone occupied and hopefully calm—so we could all ride out the blackout in peace. So poker is what happened,” I say, answering Joss’s question. “The game was getting a little heated,” I continue, and Pop cackles. I roll my eyes and sock Pop in the arm. “No pun intended. But Mr. M got upset when he had to fold for the third time in a row.”
“He threw his cards,” Pearl says, and Birdie nods.
“Like a child throwing a tantrum,” Queenie says from the other end of the couch while examining her manicured nails.
“We could have died,” Mr. Alec Montgomery-Allen adds dramatically, clutching his knitting needles, a bundle of pale yarn, and what looks like the beginning of a blanket. His husband, Todd (the other Mr. Montgomery-Allen), nods and pulls his sweater (knit by Alec) around his shoulders more tightly, even though, since the air conditioner went out with the rest of the power, it’s getting warmer in here by the second. I hope the humidity doesn’t shrink my fro.
“One of the cards skimmed a candle, caught fire, fell onto the carpet,” I say, picking up the story again. “Then Mr. M blew on it. Like, I think he thought he could blow it out like you’d blow out a candle or something.”
“Except the floor isn’t a goddamn birthday cake,” Queenie says, fluffing her silver afro. Her hair is almost as big as mine.
I snort.
“Right,” Mr. Todd Montgomery-Allen agrees. “It most certainly is not.”
“I woulda done the same thing, honey,” Birdie whispers to Mordechai and pats his leg.
“So the itty-bitty fire got a tiny bit bigger,” Pop says, like we’re all being ridiculous. And maybe we kind of are, but it was fire. “That’s when Nella-Bear sprang into action.” He squeezes my shoulder again like he’s proud.
Sadie chimes in and whispers, “Mimi was texting, so she didn’t even notice until I screamed. Can you believe it?”
Joss presses her lips together, I think to keep from laughing, but then she shakes her head seriously. She can totally believe it, her eyes say. Mimi loves the residents, but the woman texts more than I text with Bree. (Which is to say, a lot.)
“So anyway,” I continue, “I stomped on it. By then everyone was screaming, not just Miss Sadie. That’s when you walked in.”
“Wow,” Joss says, her dark eyes on me again. “Sounds like you saved the day.”
I don’t think I’ve done anything exceptional. I’m too used to being the one who gets saved, not the one who does the saving. But when she looks at me the way she’s looking at me right now, like I’m some kind of hero, I can’t help but feel a little heroic.
Pretty quickly after that, everyone moves into the living room where we, thankfully, don’t need to use any candles yet. The Montgomery-Allens go back to knitting, Queenie pulls out her reading glasses and a smutty-looking romance novel, Miss Sadie starts chatting with Mimi, and everyone else, including Aida and Mordechai, surround Ziggy.
Joss reaches into the pink fanny pack she’s wearing and hands a baggie full of dog treats to Grandpop Ike. Then without saying another word to anyone, she strides purposefully over to the grand piano near the bay window, where the sun is blessing the living room with enough light to see the individual curls that fuzz around Joss’s temples. I try hard not to stare. And when she starts playing something contemporary and upbeat, I can’t help but think, Who the hell is this girl?
Grandpop Ike doesn’t head over to Ziggy with the treats, even though the dog has spotted them and his tail is thump, thump, thumping against the floor in anticipation. Pop’s watching me watch her.
I cross my arms and pull my eyes away. “What?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“Toldja you’d like her,” he says, then he drops this bomb before heading in Ziggy’s direction: “She sings too.”
And I don’t know how I’m going to survive an entire evening with a girl like Jocelyn Williams.
My phone buzzes again. Another text from Bree. Like she can feel my spark of interest in someone other than her.
I heard there’s a blackout in the city.
You good?
My ex-friend-with-imagined-benefits (What do you even call someone you used to dream about kissing but never came close to actually kissing?) is spending the summer in Haiti, working at a children’s hospital that regularly loses electricity, and she’s checking on me. If I’m heroic, she’s basically Wonder Woman. Which is ironic, because she looks a bit like an Afro-Latinx Gal Gadot (darker skin and curlier hair, but just as gorgeous).
I’m good, I send back quickly. I have to force my thumb not to scroll up, so I won’t get lost in the things we used to say to each other. (Obsessively rereading texts is another vice of mine.)
I have another message too: this one from my cousin, Twig.
TWIG: Hey cuz, what time you gettin back to BK?
NELLA: Well hello to you too Twiggy-boo.
TWIG: Yo, you betta not call me that in public.
NELLA: Lol. I dunno. 9ish? With this blackout tho, I might not even make it.
TWIG: You HAVE to cuzzo! The block party’s gonna be poppin. Nothing else to do tonight with the lights out anyway.
Do me a solid and pick up more cups?
I tuck my phone away and shove my hands into my pockets. My cousin Twig is another person who is very invested in my love life, and he is always making me go to parties. He actually introduced me to Bree (“I think this chick I know likes chicks too, cuz!”) by dragging me to a house party I wanted to skip. So I didn’t have the heart to break it to him when what happened between me and Bree happened. Or rather, didn’t happen. He and everyone else on our block will be expecting me to show up at the party with her because we’ve been inseparable for months. They don’t know the truth about us, or more importantly about her. Just like I didn’t. I slide my hands down my face and groan, but no one notices.
“I met my Zora during one of these things,” I hear Pop say, just as Joss’s fingers go still on the piano. The Costas, who weren’t on the main floor with the rest of us, walk down the long front staircase. Joss turns, sees them, and smiles.
“Maria! Santiago! Glad you could join us,” she says cheerfully.
“Well, when we heard the piano, we thought it might be you down here,” Maria says, and I feel my jaw drop. I’ve only seen the Costas once all summer because they’re normally holed up together in their room watching telenovelas and making out like teenagers. And I’ve never seen Marie-Jeanne. I’m not even sure she’s real.
“During one of what things?” Joss asks, turning to Pop. She’s somehow listening to everyone at once.
“He’s talking about the 1977 blackout,” I tell her.
“That’s right, Nella-Bear. That’s right; 1977 it was. I’ll never forget it.”
Pop gets this faraway look in his eyes, the same one he gets whenever he talks about Granny. My chest feels tight because I miss her more when he brings her up, but it makes him so happy that I’d never ask him not to.
Joss says, “Well, don’t stop talking now. I need to hear the rest of this story.” She closes the piano and props her elbows on the lid. Her thick braids fall behind her lifted shoulders.
Pop grins.
“I noticed her right away. The day she moved in. It was her smile. She had the deepest dimples I’d ever seen on a woman. But she ain’t even know I existed,” he starts, and everyone, even Ziggy, seems to be listening. The dog curls up right by Pop’s feet and lays his big head on the toe of Aida’s orthopedic sneaker. Queenie folds her book closed and Alec and Todd stop knitting. Pearl and Birdie smirk. Mimi even puts down her phone.
“I was the super in her building. And I was trying to tell the tenants to stay inside because everyone was going nuts, looting, setting fires. The whole city was a mess. But she was dead set on walking all the way across town to check on her mama.”
I smile. I’ve heard this story dozens of times before, but I still love it, even more so since we lost Granny Z a few months ago. I turn around and kneel on the couch so I can look at him while he tells this part. It was just like my grandmother to go to any length for a person she loved.
“That girl. Head hard as a rock, even then. She wouldn’t listen. Trains wasn’t running, buses neither, and it was a half-hour walk, easy, without them. We argued for damn near forty-five minutes about it. But because I’d had a crush on her for months, I finally relented. Told her if she had to go, I was going with her. And she smiled so big and wide when I agreed, those puddle-deep dimples taking over her whole face, that I knew no matter what happened I’d made the right choice.”
“Okay, so, I definitely need to hear the rest of this,” Joss interrupts. “But do you have a picture of her?” She looks around and says, “I can’t be the only one who wants to see those dimples!”
“Oh, we know what she looks like,” Todd says. And everyone in the room nods.
Grandpop Ike shows his favorite photo of Granny to people constantly. Everyone here has definitely seen it, and I’m actually really surprised Joss hasn’t. Sadie even painted a portrait of Granny Zora based on the photo and gave it to Pop for his birthday. It’s hanging on the wall in his room.
Grandpop Ike smiles. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. But when he pushes back the thin flap that’s usually just in front of the well-worn photograph of my Granny Zora, he makes a strange face.
“Hm,” Pop says. He turns his back to us, empties his wallet, and then the rest of his pockets before turning around. Folded receipts, credit cards, a few wrinkled bills, and a dozen coins clatter onto the little side table closest to him.
“You good?” Queenie asks. But Pop looks at the table, then turns in a circle. “Hm,” he says again.
He walks over to the coat rack by the door and turns the pockets of his jacket inside out. They’re empty already, and now Pop is starting to look stressed.
“Uh, Mimi? You seen the photo of my Zora anywhere?”
Mimi shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says.
Pop walks to the couch and lifts the cushions, even tells me and Queenie to stand up so he can look under the ones we’d been sitting on.
“I don’t know where it could be,” he says. “Nella, you know how much I love that picture.”
I nod, thinking of the day we got Granny’s diagnosis. The day when he tucked the photo into his wallet and everything started to change.
“Pop,” I say. “Don’t worry. It’s gotta be here somewhere. You haven’t even left Althea House in like three days, right?”
He nods, but his eyes are still darting around the room like the photo is right in front of him, he just isn’t seeing it.
“So we’ll look for it when the lights come back on,” I promise him. “We’ll find it.”
But he shakes his head. “No, kiddo, you don’t understand. That photo hasn’t left my sight since the day I moved out of our apartment. I need it back now.”
Pop is level-headed when it comes to just about everything. Except Granny Zora. He went to a really dark place after she passed. It was why Mom thought it would be a good idea for him to move in here instead of staying in the apartment he’d lived in with Granny for forty years. It was a fight to get him out of their two-bedroom Harlem walk-up, but here Pop has built-in friends, no bills to pay, and me and Mom don’t have to worry that he’s not eating or that he’s spending all day sitting around alone.
Pop heads for the stairs and trips on the first one, probably because the hallway is more shadowed than normal.
“Pop!” I jog over and grab his arm. I pull him up even though he caught himself with one hand and didn’t fall all the way down. “I’ll look for it now, okay? You just go chill in the living room. I don’t want you to, like, break a hip, old man.”
He kinda smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Maybe because this blackout is reminding him so much of the summer he met Granny.
I walk him back over to the couch in the living room. Sadie puts a hand on his shoulder and Aida hands him Ziggy’s treats from where he’d dropped them when he first reached into his wallet for the picture.
“Ziggy,” Joss says from the piano. She’d jumped up when Grandpop Ike tripped. She walks over to where Pop has sat down and points to him. “Lap,” she says. And Ziggy pads over and puts both his paws on Pop’s lap. He rests his head on top and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Pop pats Ziggy’s head and then Joss says, “Off,” and Ziggy drops his paws to the floor. Pop hands him a treat and a little drool gets on Pop’s fingers when Ziggy eats it.
“Good boy,” Pop says, but he sounds sad.
“I’ll find it,” I tell him. “Don’t worry. Why don’t you finish telling the story? I’m sure it’s just in your room somewhere. I’ll be right back,” I say. I head for the stairs.
“Joss, why don’t you keep her company?” Grandpop suggests. “Would you mind?”
“Course not,” Joss says. When she comes up behind me, Ziggy follows. “No, Zigs, I’ll be right back. You stay, okay? Ike, can you give him another treat?”
Pop nods and Ziggy turns as soon as the other residents call him back. I hear Pop say, “So yeah, where was I?”
Mimi says, “You were both going to walk across town,” and I can see Pop’s smile return though it’s definitely a little dimmer than it was before.
I look at Joss. She smiles too. I feel fidgety because she’s so pretty, but I still want to know her.
I swallow hard and smile back. Then we both step away from the sunlit room and into the dark.
Her bracelets are a riot of bells.
I turn on the flashlight on my phone so I can see where I’m going on the shadowy stairway, and so I can check the stairs and floor along the upstairs hallway for the picture. Even though I don’t look back, thanks to Joss’s bangles, I can hear that she’s there.
“Pop’s room is right down the hall,” I say once we get to the top. “I bet the picture just fell out of his wallet in there.”
“No worries,” she says. “I’m happy to help you look around.”
I push open his bedroom door and step inside. I yank at my denim skirt because my minis always ride up when I climb stairs. It’s slightly brighter inside his room than it was in the hallway, maybe because the walls are closer out there. His only window faces the brick wall of the house next door, so though the sun still shines, long shadows paint the floor.
I prop my phone up on Pop’s desk, and Joss does the same with her phone on his dresser. The two beams cast a soft white light through the dim room. My grandfather left a sweater thrown over the arm of his lounger, and his bed is unmade, but otherwise the room is pretty neat. In the center of the floor there’s a blanket spread out with small packets of snack crackers and chips on fancy china, a ceramic teapot, and cups with the leftover dregs of tea. I blush, a little embarrassed, when Joss says, “What’s all this?”
“Oh, um.” This girl is cute. I am weird. I thought I’d have a little more time before she saw the f
reak flag I’m always trying to hide.
“We have vending machine tea party picnics sometimes,” I say quietly.
“Vending machine . . . tea party . . . picnics? But, there’s no vending machine in Althea House, is there?” Joss asks.
I kinda cringe, still facing away from her. “No,” I say. I move the blankets around on Pop’s bed like I’m looking for the photo but I’m mostly just trying to not look at her. “I grab the snacks from the vending machine at my job—I’m a lifeguard at a YMCA—and bring them with me when I come visit Pop.”
“What?” Joss asks. It sounds like she’s smiling, but I don’t turn to check. “Why?”
“It’s dumb,” I say.
Joss taps me on the shoulder, so then I do turn around. She’s smirking at me and she’s so beautiful, even with shadows falling over her face. She’s frowning a little too, like she’s confused.
“Nella.”
It’s the first time she’s said my name, and the way it sounds in her voice makes me feel even hotter. I blush more, grateful for the closeness of the room and my own dark skin. I don’t think she can tell.
“It’s just this thing. We used to do it with Granny Zora when she was in the hospital. You know. Near the end.”
Joss shakes her head, not really getting it, so I keep talking.
“Tea parties and picnics were her two favorite things. She couldn’t get outside anymore, and she hadn’t hosted a tea party since she’d gotten sick. So one day I got this idea. I picked up her favorite china from their apartment. I told Pop and my mom to buy a crap ton of snacks from the vending machine, and we spread them out on her hospital bed and had this combination tea party picnic. It made her so happy and cheered the rest of us up too. So now sometimes when I’m sad, Pop will tell me to ‘bring reinforcements.’” I gesture to the floor. “He’s always talking about this.”
Joss smiles. “Oh,” she says. “Oh God. That’s real adorable.”
I blush harder.
A moment later, she starts crawling around on the floor, moving the china and blanket gently aside. I realize she’s looking for the photo and remember that’s why we came up here in the first place. Then I’m pulling open drawers and lifting my grandfather’s sweaters and socks, trousers, and T-shirts. But I don’t see the photo anywhere.
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