Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White series Book 2)

by Barbara Neely

  “I was just soaking up the last of this gorgeous place before I’m run out of town. No. That’s not fair. Nobody’s making me leave. I just wish…”

  “What?”

  “Well, it pisses me off that I have to leave here.” She looked toward the ocean. “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen!” She turned to look at Blanche. “Did you hear about the woman who died here last week?” Blanche just nodded.

  “It really made me think,” Tina said. “In a way, her dying makes me want to stay here even more. She wasn’t sick or anything. You never know what could happen. This could be the last time I ever see the ocean.”

  “Then why leave?”

  “Money. The usual reason. Durant didn’t tell me his parents were going to be here. I thought we’d be staying at their cottage for the week. But the minute they showed up, I moved into the Inn. I can’t afford even in their dinkiest room after tonight.”

  “And you won’t let Durant help you, right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because I wouldn’t either.” Blanche was glad Tina could still smile.

  “It’s too bad you’ve got to leave.” They sat in silence a few moments. The sighing of the breeze in the trees mingled with the shushing sea in an embroidery of sound that was nearly visible in the air. Blanche thought about Veronica. Even if Durant left with Tina, the girl would feel run off. Of course, a little bit more of Durant’s mother might convince Tina she needed a new boyfriend. And then there was Taifa. Tina was bright, well-spoken, independent, fiery, seemed to believe in something more than making money, and she was dark-skinned. She didn’t really know the young woman, but still…“Wait here ’til I come back, will you?” Blanche hurried off to her room.

  “Great!” David said when Blanche got him on the phone. “The sofa opens. She can take care of these wild monkeys and you can get some real vacation.”

  Blanche went back to Tina. “Come stay with me! I’m moving into the Crowleys’ cottage tomorrow when they take off. It’ll just be me and the children. There’s a sofabed in the living room.”

  “Really? Could I?” Tina sat up. “I can watch the kids, and I’m a good cook! And I’ve got references, too. You can call the English As a Second Language Institute where I work, or Dr. Lawrence at Brown, I took care of her kids for a summer.”

  She said she’d take her things to the cottage in the morning and ran off—to find Durant, Blanche guessed. And they say black people don’t stick together, she laughed.

  When she finally got to the Crowley cottage, she stood outside looking in the window at her children playing Monopoly with David and his kids. Christine was standing behind Taifa laughing at something the girl had just said. Malik took his turn, gave an, “Ah well,” shrug, and laughed. David patted him on the back. Taifa and Malik had a poise and confidence and ease with these people and in their surroundings that Blanche was sure her two hadn’t learned from her. When would they reach the age where they had more in common with other people and places than they had with her and the place she occupied? Only natural, she told herself, but it didn’t feel like it. A memory flashed across her mind of how her mother had looked at her the first time Blanche came home with an afro and wearing a boubou. Back then, she'd thought what she saw in her mother's eyes was disgust with Blanche's nappy hair and African dress and her belief in the Black Power movement that was the unseen part of what her clothes and hair meant. Now she recognized the look of loss in her mother’s eyes. It came from knowing the child she’d raised had grown up to be someone she didn’t know and wasn’t sure she could like. Blanche felt herself about to repeat history.

  It was bedtime when she went inside. She kissed Taifa and Malik good night with a tenderness that made both children scowl.

  Christine walked Blanche through the cottage, showing her where to find everything.

  “Did I tell you the Inn sends someone on Tuesdays and Fridays to keep the mess under control?” Christine gave Blanche a concerned look. “Is that OK?”

  Blanche smiled and nodded. She appreciated Christine’s concern. The maid with a maid was not your usual situation. She was also pleased Christine didn’t assume she’d do the work herself. They continued their tour.

  The Crowley’s cottage was the kind of place in which Blanche was accustomed to working: Lots of expensive, bare wood, an air of being used but without the shabbiness she often found among the very wealthiest of white people. Elegantly framed originals on the wall, kitchen equipped with bread-maker and a cappuccino/espresso machine. Everything had the over-clean glow that said outside help.

  Finally, Christine showed her into the master bedroom, closed the door, and sat on the bed. Blanche went to stand by the window and looked out at the lawn and the sea in the distance. She was waiting for Christine to get it together to tell her what she suspected she already knew.

  “Blanche, there’s something…I want…” Blanche turned and looked at her.

  “You know already, don’t you?”

  Blanche didn’t say anything.

  “David’s two years younger than me, you know.”

  Blanche nodded. She knew what Christine meant. She’d learned early that males of the same age as she were really younger.

  “We’ve known each other forever. Our mothers were best friends. Our fathers played golf together every Saturday. It’s like being married to your brother, or yourself. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night struggling for air. Most of the time, I feel like a fuel pump with five outlets, one for my aging mother; one for my patients; one for David; and one for each of the children. And all of them are in constant use, draining me of every thought, every dream, every drop of energy, every…Nobody gives me…”

  “What now?”

  Christine laughed. “You certainly go right to the heart of the hard part. I don’t know. I only know that I can’t go on like this.”

  “Have you talked to David?”

  Christine nodded again. “He’s so confused! What else? He could understand another man. He can’t imagine why I would want to be alone, away from him, from the children.”

  “Are you planning to leave?”

  Christine jumped up from the bed and paced the floor. “I don’t know, Blanche. I love David and the children. I’m proud of the way we’re raising them. But I need some air, or I’ll suffocate!”

  “Then why are you going off with David on the boat?” Blanche wanted to know.

  “I thought it would give us a chance to really talk. A chance to make him see that things aren’t…” She gave Blanche a bleak look. “Anyway, we seem to be at our best when we’re on the water.”

  “Don’t look so down, honey. You and David have figured out how to raise two great kids and you still at least like each other. You can work something out.” Blanche wondered what it felt like to have to negotiate your freedom with a man, as though you weren’t in full ownership of yourself. She silently wished Christine luck.

  Blanche was in a hurry to get back to her room. Ardell would be home now. Showered, had her dinner, lying back in that beat up old lumpy armchair she refused to part with. Blanche was so eager, she could hardly make the call. Ardell answered as if she’d been waiting for Blanche’s call.

  “Hey, girlfriend. Whatsup?”

  Blanche laughed. “Everything but the ground and I ain’t sure of that.”

  They postponed the niceties and went right to Blanche’s report, including her arrival at Amber Cove; Arthur Hill; the Outsiders and the Insiders; Mattie, Hank, and Carol; Tina, Durant, and his family; and Faith’s fatal accident. She took a deep breath and added what David had said about Faith’s wiring and what the boys said about homemade cookies.

  “In other words, if she hadn’t been so cheap, she’d still be alive. Too bad she couldn’t figure out how to spread those cookies around a little more,” Blanche said.

 
; “Damn, girl! You ain’t been there but two days. You’ll really need a vacation when you get home. Whatsup with the kids? You didn’t mention them.”

  Blanche hesitated half a second. “They’re having a great time.

  “Hummm. So what’s wrong?” There was no doubt in Ardell’s voice.

  Blanche's shoulders tensed. "Taifa's going through a color thing.” Blanche told her about the conversation with Taifa.

  “Oh baby, I’m so sorry. I really am. But you know you have to expect things like that with our kids. They ain’t stupid. They see what happens on the street. They watch TV and hear grown-ups talk. They see who gets treated which way and why. It’s a wonder we ain’t all color-struck.”

  Ardell’s tone called forth the image of a black person struck by blinding-white lightning that made them hate their own color. It was an image from when her mother had first tried to explain to little Blanche why so many children she thought looked like her called her names.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Ardell. But it sure hurt. Here I am, black as the ace of spades and my child, my child tells me she can’t even bear to get a little sun on her narrow behind for fear of being dissed! Now what the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Blanche’s throat tightened as she spoke.

  “Hummm. I don’t know how you gonna deal with that. But I know you can, ’cause you got to.” She was quiet then, waiting for Blanche’s tears to subside.

  “Well all the news from here ain’t depressing. I met a man.”

  “Ooh-wee! Start at the beginning and don’t leave out any of the juicy parts!”

  Blanche told Ardell about Stu, the dance, and her plan to meet him later.

  “You don’t sound all that enthused.”

  “Hummm. It ain’t me. It’s him. I like him, even if he is a bit too fine for my taste. But I can’t figure him out.”

  “You sayin’ you can’t think of no reason why he wants to be around you? That what you saying?”

  Blanche thought for a moment. “It’s like when you get one of them postcards saying you won an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii. It sure sounds good, but you can’t quite believe somebody out there is giving you a free trip for nothing. So, you ask yourself, what’s the catch? The trip still looks good. Postcard got a color picture of the beach and palm trees and a fabulous hotel, but you still know there’s a catch and you got to figure out what it is before you start packing to go nowhere, or to take a trip you can’t afford. See what I mean?”

  “Hummm, well, I guess you got a point. But you know I had to ask. You up there going though funny shit with your child and living among them Caucasian-ettes, I thought I better check to make sure it wasn’t making you think like a fool.”

  Still, Blanche took Ardell’s comment as a warning. The subtle and not so subtle snubs from the jogging couple and Arthur Hill, the way the guests had looked at her when she first entered the dining room had a much better chance of poisoning her because of Taifa's attitude. The hole of self-hatred she’d climbed out of as a young woman was still gaping wide and deep. Just because she wasn’t teetering on the edge anymore didn’t mean she couldn’t be lured back. For the third time since she’d arrived, she warned herself to have a care.

  “Relax, honey,” she told Ardell. “I really am OK. This mess with Taifa did throw me, but you’re right. It’s to be expected in this world and especially going to the kind of school where most of the black kids are likely to be light-skinned.

  “And trust me, my thing about Stu is really about him. You know men who look like him, especially those from proper Negro families, ain’t usually got enough soul to be moved by my fine black frame—unless they’re looking for an easy lay. We’ll see if he’s for real when I tell him how I make my living.”

  “Hummm. You sound like you want him to step wrong. Maybe you’re just prejudiced against the man. But I guess you know what you’re talking about when it comes to there maybe being a catch. Remember Harvey? That’s what you said about him, too.”

  Blanche and Ardell cracked up over the memory: Two years ago, Ardell had gone out with Harvey five or six times. Each time, Ardell had put her best foot so far forward she’d developed a blister. “Something funny about him,” Blanche kept saying. Harvey continued to call but remained lukewarm. The cooler he was, the more Ardell had wanted him, despite Blanche’s advice to go slow. Then one weekend Ardell ran into Harvey in Atlanta. He’d been dressed in a black lace dress with red accessories. He’d announced that he was a non-gay cross-dresser who admired Ardell’s taste in clothes. When Ardell told him she wanted to think about what this meant to their budding relationship, he’d added that if she decided not to date him anymore, he hoped they could go shopping together sometime. The two of them had been shopping buddies ever since.

  They laughed and talked until Blanche was caught up with the antics of Ardell’s grown son, Maurice—a studio back-up singer in Atlanta; the latest outrage from Ardell’s supervisor at the electrical parts factory—her regular daytime job; Ardell’s latest encounter with Blanche’s sharp-tongued mother; and the news about Shirley’s pregnancy, Velma’s divorce; and Miz Carter, whose duties as church organist had apparently been broadened to include certain private services for Reverend Brown.

  When she got off the phone, Blanche felt even further removed from the world of Amber Cove. Here, Rev’s antics would likely be condemned because it made the churchgoers look bad to white folks. The hoots of laughter accompanied by slapped palms that this gossip would generate over tonk games in her hometown neighborhood would be missing here, too. Did Stu even know what tonk was? Could he tell the difference between Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King? What would he think of her mama’s rickety little tar paper house in Farleigh, North Carolina? And why did she care? They’d only been together twice. While she could still feel the heat of his body against her as they danced, she wasn’t stupid. She knew that was a poor measure of anything but the desire to be doing that thang. Still, she did like what she’d seen of the basic him. As for the catch, it would keep until tomorrow.

  SIX

  The phone woke her.

  “Get up, sleepy head! We’re off to the briny deep!” David sounded eager to be gone.

  Tina already had the kids well in hand when Blanche arrived. Christine and David wore matching shorts and caps with CAPTAIN printed on them.

  “Two captains?” Blanche asked.

  “That’s right.” David lay his arm along Christine’s shoulders. “Behind every great Captain is a woman who thinks she’s Captain. I thought I’d play along with the fantasy and let her wear the hat.”

  Christine poked him in his ribs. “He gets like this if I don’t give him close supervision. He’ll know his place when I bring him back to land.”

  Blanche looked from one to the other, trying to gauge how much of this cute couple routine was for real. Had they come to some understanding in the night? Neither of them seemed tense, neither of their smiles had any rigor mortis in it.

  “Come on, woman!” David grabbed Christine’s hand, dragging her toward the front door. Casey and Deirdre flung themselves at Christine who hugged them, straightened Casey’s shirt, brushed back Deirdre’s hair, all the while asking them to behave, to take care of each other and not give Blanche and Tina the blues. Casey and Deirdre shifted over to David, and Taifa and Malik moved in on Christine for a less intense kiss and hug good-bye, which David repeated.

  After they’d all waved David and Christine off, the girls grabbed Tina by both hands and dragged her down the beach whispering and giggling as they went. The boys announced they were going to build a stone fort on the beach. Blanche walked slowly back to the Crowleys’ cottage. The world seemed freshly washed and sparkling, even at noon. She listened to the silences in between the waves. She hadn’t heard a plane since she’d arrived. She made fresh coffee and took it and her Octavia Butler book out to the front porch. For the first time si
nce she’d arrived at Amber Cove, her mind fell into the well-worn groove of feeding and planning to feed. They’d have a cold cuts, fruit, and salad kind of lunch instead of going to the Big House to eat. Deirdre and Casey needed some close time to get used to her.

  She’d only been reading for a few minutes when she heard Taifa’s voice. She looked up to see Taifa and Deirdre running toward her. This was not a race, or running and shouting for the hell of it, or we-gotta-pee kind of running, either. Blanche laid her book aside and hurried toward them. They were both too breathless to speak. But they weren’t bleeding. Blanche looked down the beach in the opposite direction from which they’d come. She could see Malik and Casey intently piling rocks. She looked in the direction from which the girls had come. “Where’s Tina?”

  They pointed down the beach.

  “She sent us, Mama Blanche.”

  “Clothes,” Deirdre panted. “On the beach.”

  “She said to bring you,” Taifa added.

  Deirdre bobbed her head up and down in agreement. Both girls’ eyes seemed unusually wide. Blanche fastened her sandals and hurried after them. As they drew closer to where Tina was waiting, the girls fell back to walk at Blanche’s side, each of them took one of her hands.

  The clothes were very neatly folded: a pair of well-worn gray cord slacks and a white polo shirt on top of a pair of leather sandals. The corner of something that could be a pair of jockey shorts stuck out from between the trousers and the shirt, like meat in a sandwich. The clothes were topped by an envelope held in place by a wallet. The bundle had been there long enough to acquire a thin shell of fine, sandy grit. Tina stood nearby staring down at the pile. Blanche sent the girls back down the beach and told them to stay with the boys at the fort.

  Blanche glanced at Tina, then stepped to the clothes. She reached out her hand to lift the wallet and look inside, but she didn’t need to: She recognized the sandals. She flipped the wallet open anyway, just to make sure. It was not a thing to make a mistake about. She looked down at the name on the driver’s license in the wallet and quickly up at Tina.