I know Elliott doesn’t want me to get too excited, but I hope the new neighbors are kinfolk.
PURE BLACK
DAD AND I WAIT UNTIL TEN O’CLOCK (“A RESPECTABLE time for a visit,” he says) before we head over to the B&B.
I wear my white cutoffs and my favorite pink tank top, but I am still nervous. What if Elliott is right? What if we have nothing in common with them? What if the new girl is worse than Nicolette McKee?
Dad rings the bell to the inn. I’m clutching the bread in a death grip so it won’t slip out of my nervous hands. We don’t hear anything from inside. Maybe they left the car and went on a walk? I didn’t see anyone come out.
He looks at me, shrugs, and rings the bell again. “We can leave it on the porch with a note if they aren’t home,” he says.
I try to look like I’m okay with this plan, but I feel deflated at the thought. After all that time making the bread and picking out the perfect outfit and waiting for this very moment, I don’t want to leave without meeting them.
But then there are footsteps. And the lace curtains rustle in the window next to the door. My skin tingles when I hear the lock click.
A tall woman with dark brown skin and pretty eyes opens the door. She looks surprised to see us, then smiles. “Good morning. We’re not open for business yet, but—”
“Oh, we’re your neighbors,” Dad says quickly, smiling back. “I’m Kadeem Freeman-Price, and this is my daughter, Alberta. We live across the street.”
“The blue house,” I say.
“Oh.” The woman’s eyebrows are raised so high I wonder if they’re going to shoot off her face. “Wow. Well, hello.”
“Sorry to drop by like this,” my dad says. “We know you need to get settled. We just wanted to say welcome to the neighborhood and drop off some banana bread. Alberta and I baked it.”
“We did,” I say, holding it out.
“You baked this? For us?” The woman still looks so shocked, even as she takes the bread from my hands. “That is so kind of you. I—oh, excuse me. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Calliope Whitman.”
“Nice to meet you,” Dad says, shaking her free hand.
“We just flew in yesterday and I’m so frazzled and”—she lowers her voice as if the whole town is listening—“well, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see any of us for a while. Especially not living on my own street.”
My father laughs. “We know the feeling, trust me. We live with Alberta’s other father, my husband, Elliott. The three of us have been the only black people on this street for the decade we’ve lived here. We’re happy to see you, too.”
Ms. Whitman laughs, and I like it right away. It is deep and warm, and she shows a lot of teeth. “Would you like to come in? Our things haven’t arrived yet, but we have coffee and fruit if you’d like some.”
Dad looks at me sideways. “You know what goes good with coffee?”
Ms. Whitman taps the banana bread in her hand. “It definitely does. Please, if you have time, come in. Alberta, I want you to meet my daughter, Edie. You look about her age.”
“I’m twelve,” I say. “I’ll be in seventh grade.”
“Edie is twelve, exactly! Oh, I can’t believe how well this is already working out.” She holds the door wider for us to come in. Then Ms. Whitman stands at the bottom of the stairs and calls up, “Edie! Come down here, please. We have company.”
Dad closes the front door, and Ms. Whitman leads us to the kitchen. She’s asking my father what he does. I’m glad she’s not asking me questions, because I’m too busy gazing around the B&B. It looks familiar, but it’s been a long time since I was in here. Not since Mrs. Harris had her last holiday party, and I think I was in fourth grade then.
“An art gallery?” Ms. Whitman shakes her head with a smile. “That’s so wonderful. And I hope you won’t judge me, because we haven’t had a chance to put our own touch on the B&B just yet. The sale included the furniture.”
Dad looks around. “Mrs. Harris was old-fashioned, but they spruced up the place quite a bit after she…” He clears his throat. I wonder if Ms. Whitman knows why the B&B was for sale. “Maybe just look into some new linens and a reupholstery or two and you’ll be good to go.”
“I’m sure you’re busy, but I’d be forever grateful if you could help us pick out some art for the walls sometime?” She sighs. “Decorating is not my forte.”
“I’d be happy to,” Dad says. “Elliott also has a real eye. He teaches studio art and art history at Cal Poly.”
I keep listening for footsteps on the stairs, but I don’t hear anything. Ms. Whitman must notice the silence at the same time because she pokes her head around the corner and calls out again. “Edie, please come down here now. Our new neighbors are here.”
I keep picturing different versions of the girl upstairs. One version is wearing cornrows. Another one has a big smile with braces and an Afro puff. And another one looks a little like me, but without the straight-up-and-down little-girl body.
Ms. Whitman pulls a butter knife from a drawer and examines it closely. “Full disclosure, I forgot to pick up dish soap and new silverware yesterday, so we’ve been eating with these. They… came with the house.”
That would bother Elliott so much, but Dad just shrugs. “Looks clean enough to me. What doesn’t kill us, right?”
“Then I guess we’ll keep taking our chances.” She cuts into the banana bread.
Finally, I hear feet clomping down the stairs. My heart starts beating a little faster and I’m feeling the same kind of nervous as when we stepped onto the porch a few minutes ago. I try to guess which version of the girl will come in this room, but I can’t decide. She could be anyone. And at the last second, I think she’s probably not anything like I imagined.
Ms. Whitman looks up and smiles. “There she is. Edie, these are our new neighbors from across the street. Alberta and her father Kadeem.”
I see Dad’s face before I look at Edie. And it is… well, I don’t know if surprised is the right word. Then I turn around and—I was right. I never would have guessed Edie looks like this.
She’s tall, like her mom. And she is dressed all in black: a black tank top, a long black skirt, and black combat boots. Even her hair is long and straight and midnight black. But I can’t stop staring at her face. At her lips. They are the darkest color I’ve ever seen: pure black. And it looks even darker because her skin is a light, light brown.
I can’t believe she’s allowed to wear makeup. I can’t believe she’s my age. I feel about eight years old next to her in my white and pink.
She gives me a small smile. “Hey, I’m Edie. I like your hair.”
I touch my locs and smile. Suddenly I don’t feel so nervous.
Edie and her mother are from New York City.
“I’ve never been there,” I say.
Edie sighs. “I miss Brooklyn already. I miss everything about it. Our brownstone, our bodega, our cat.”
I don’t know what a brownstone is, but it seems like something I should know, so I don’t ask. I don’t even pretend to know the other word.
“What’s a bodega?”
Edie’s eyes light up. “You’ve never heard of a bodega?” I’m starting to get used to her dark lipstick, but I still stare at her mouth when she talks. I can’t help it. Even Laramie doesn’t get to wear makeup yet.
I shake my head.
“It’s, like… quintessential New York.” She pauses. “Like a convenience store, sort of. You can buy everything there. Chips, laundry stuff, Band-Aids, phone chargers, hot food… everything! And they almost always have a cat.”
“Wait,” I say. “Your cat lives at the bodega?”
“No, my cat was my cat. Arnold. But lots of cats live in bodegas.”
“Oh, like Jordan,” I say. “The tortie who lives at the library.”
She nods. “Everything was sort of dusty in our bodega. But I loved going there. They knew me and my family. And I miss their egg and cheeses. We didn’t have ti
me to get one yesterday before we went to the airport, so I don’t even know when I’ll have one again.”
We’re upstairs in her bedroom, which spreads across the entire top floor. The attic.
I look around. It’s a little musty up here, but even under the layers of dust, I can see it’s a great room. Thick wooden beams drop down from the ceiling, and there’s a small window shaped like a hexagon. A couple of boxes are shoved in the corner, but they look like they were here before Edie and her mom. There’s a bed with an iron frame, and a bookshelf across the room.
“I can’t believe your mom is letting you sleep up here. It’s so cool.”
I remember that Mrs. Harris’s room and another bedroom are on the bottom floor. The guest rooms are on the second level, the one under us.
“Yeah. She feels guilty about splitting up with my dad, so she’s being extra nice right now.” Edie shrugs.
“You won’t be scared sleeping up here?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait till my stuff comes, but the bed was already here, and I love it. This is the best room ever. It’s like I live in a Victorian novel.” She pauses. “Do you like the Brontë sisters?”
“Um… I don’t know?”
“They were writers. They wrote some of the best books ever. Like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.”
“I thought those were movies.”
“They started out as books,” she says, giving me a look like she doesn’t know if she should forgive me for not knowing that.
“Oh. Well, I’m sort of more into movies.”
She perks up at this. “I like movies, too. What kind are you into?”
“Horror, mostly.”
“Really?” She stares at me like we rewound to fifteen minutes ago and she’s just seeing me for the first time.
“What?”
“Well, no offense, but you don’t really seem like someone who’d like horror.”
My mouth drops open. “You just met me!”
“I know, but you look so… innocent.” Her eyes roam over my pink top. Not in a judgy way, but it still makes me shrink, hugging my knees to my flat chest.
“Do you like horror?”
She makes a face. “Why? Because I’m wearing all black?”
I shrug. “Well… yeah.”
“Horror and gothic aren’t the same things.”
“Oh.”
“But I like some horror movies. And I love Halloween, because everyone feels free to dress exactly how they want to.”
“Dad, Elliott, and I have a horror movie marathon every Halloween,” I say. “You should come over this year.”
Laramie tried to watch with us exactly one time before she said never again to our movie marathon. When she got home, she had to leave all the lights on to go to sleep, and when that didn’t work, she convinced Leif to let her sleep on his bedroom floor. Jaws was the one that got her. To be fair, even I stayed out of the water for a few weeks after that one.
“Do you dress up, too? I can’t wait till Halloween this year. I’m going to—oh.” Her big brown eyes drop to her lap.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Edie mumbles.
It’s obviously something. “What did you do when you lived in New York?”
“That’s the thing,” she says, looking up at me through her curtain of hair. “I forgot I’m not going to be there for it this year. My dad’s friends always have a huge party, but tons of kids our age go, too. And there’s a big costume contest. I won best prize last year.”
“What were you?”
She smiles now. “Coraline. My mom played the Other Mother and put buttons over her eyes.”
“That sounds really cool.” Coraline is one of my favorites, too.
“It was. Everyone loved it.” She sighs. “And now I’m stuck here. No offense,” she quickly adds.
I shrug like I don’t care, even though I don’t like what she said. What’s so bad about Ewing Beach? “Actually, a lot of people go up to SLO for Halloween.”
“What’s SLO?”
“San Luis Obispo,” I say.
“Oh, that’s where my mom and I flew in!”
“They have a haunted cave and show scary movies and have costume parties, too.”
Edie sits up a little. “A haunted cave?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do you ever go?”
“Sometimes. Maybe my dads can take us this year.”
Edie smiles, her eyes drifting down to my neck. “What’s that?”
I finger the silver necklace I wear every day. Dad and Elliott gave it to me for my last birthday. “A surfboard.”
Her eyes widen. “You surf?”
“It’s my favorite thing in the world. Do you?”
“Oh my god, no!” She shakes her head back and forth so fast it makes me dizzy. “I can’t even swim.”
I stare at her. “Are you serious? What do you do at the beach?”
Edie blinks back at me. “I don’t go to the beach. Not unless it’s Coney Island.”
“What’s so special about Coney Island?”
“Alberta, you need a lesson on New York City, stat,” she says in a bossy voice. But she says it with a smile.
“And I can tell you all about the Central Coast,” I say. “Deal?”
“Deal,” she says, and we shake on it.
Well, I guess we can’t have everything in common. Laramie and I don’t.
Besides, no matter what Elliott said about skinfolk versus kinfolk, it seems more important to think about what Edie and I do have in common. Which is something I don’t share with many people in this town—and I think that has to count for something.
FEMININE PERSPECTIVE
DAD CALLS A FAMILY MEETING AFTER DINNER.
Our last one was a year ago, when we talked about getting a pet. I wanted a dog. I didn’t care what kind. Just whichever one I liked best at the shelter. I even had a name picked out: I would call her Gidget after the surfer my dads showed me in this really old TV show, and she’d come down to the beach with me and chase the tide. Elliott wanted a cat because he said they’re clean and quiet. Dad was our tiebreaker—he didn’t want anything.
The meeting before that one was about Elliott’s job. Another college wanted to hire him, but it was all the way across the country, in Maine. Elliott said we’d just be moving from one beach community to another, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t take the job. And even though Dad and I both said we’d move without a fuss if it made him happy, I was glad he didn’t.
I try to guess what the meeting is about during dinner, but they won’t tell me. They don’t look mad, though, so I’m not in trouble. At least I hope not.
Family meetings are held in our tiny backyard at the picnic table under the paper lanterns. It’s cool at nighttime in Ewing Beach, even in the summer. So Elliott makes chai and we take it outside where we bundle into beach blankets under the stars.
“Why do we always have our meetings outside?” I asked Dad once.
He breathed in deeply and looked at me. “There’s something about the fresh air that makes people think more clearly,” he said, letting out his breath slowly.
Tonight is extra chilly. I wrap the woolly red-and-black plaid blanket around me as tight as it will go and watch the steam curl up from our mugs.
“I officially call this meeting of the Freeman-Price family to order,” Dad says in a voice that he thinks makes him sound businesslike. I think he sounds more like the ringmaster of a circus: too loud and a little bit silly.
Elliott smiles and pounds his fist on the table like a gavel.
I try not to roll my eyes.
Dad looks at me. “We have some news, Alberta.”
Oh no. Are we moving to Maine after all? Or am I going to have to do something I hate, like the time I had to take ballet lessons to make sure I have a “well-rounded childhood”? The leotard was so tight I wanted to tear it right off. My wet suits are even tighter, but those are differen
t. They keep me warm when the water is freezing. I was cold every single time I wore that leotard. And I wasn’t interested in pointing my toes or moving my arms like a swan.
“Good news,” Elliott says from across the table.
I look back and forth from him to Dad. “What is it?”
“You know Denise,” Dad says slowly.
Of course I know Denise. She’s my surrogate mother. The doctor implanted her with Elliott’s sperm to make a baby. Which ended up being me.
“And you know she’s getting ready to have a baby herself,” he goes on.
I nod. She had just gotten pregnant the last time she came to visit, at the beginning of the year, but you couldn’t tell yet.
“Well, it turns out that Tim has to go away for work. They didn’t plan it, of course, and it can’t be avoided. He’ll be gone a few weeks, right up until the baby is about to be born.”
“So,” Elliott takes over, “we thought she’d come stay with us for the last few weeks of her pregnancy. She can get away from the bustle of L.A. and spend some time here in Ewing Beach.”
“How does that sound?” Dad asks.
“Sounds good to me.”
I like Denise, but it’s almost impossible to not like Denise. She’s a sunny person, always smiling and laughing and sweet. She gives the best hugs, her hair always looks pretty, and she smells like patchouli and oranges.
We see her a couple of times a year, usually when she and her husband are passing through on their way to San Francisco. They came up for Dad’s fiftieth birthday party last year, and we stayed at her and Tim’s house when we went to L.A. for a big art show when I was ten.
“We thought it might be nice for you to have her around,” Elliot says. “Another… feminine perspective. But we wanted to be sure it’s all right with you, too, since she’s going to be sharing space with all of us.” He’s giving me that serious look. The one that says I’d better not lie.
“It’s all right with me.” I pause. “But what is she going to do while she’s here?”
I get annoyed when people who don’t live here say Ewing Beach is boring, but the truth is you can do pretty much everything in town in two days. And there’s even less to do after Labor Day, when half the restaurants shut down for the season and all the other businesses cut their hours.
The Only Black Girls in Town Page 3