It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English

  Lily sat there for a moment. She put the radio down and swiveled on her bench to look at me with her head cocked and her eyes narrowed. I felt a storm brewing. “You didn’t say anything to those little girls?”

  “No.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Came home,” I said.

  “Did you tell Mom?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t tell her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to take care of those little bitches.”

  I looked over at her and waited, but she’d already gone back to rolling her hair on the big plastic rollers. She had something in mind. I felt a flutter in my stomach. Then I heard our front door open and close. I made it to the den window just in time to see my father leave. Just in time to see him skip down the front steps, pluck the morning paper off the hibiscus bush, look at it for a moment, and then toss it back toward the front porch. He headed for his car.

  The way he eased his Chrysler 300 out of the driveway and turned its nose toward Olympiad reminded me of a long, sleek, twin-finned creature slipping away. Where was he going on a Saturday? Earlier, I’d heard my mother grabbing her datebook and briefcase and heading out that same door, her heels clicking on the entry-hall tiles. Everyone was always going.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Rest of Saturday

  * * *

  LATER MY SISTER was gone, too. Off to her interview. She planned to walk all the way there, come back with a job, and shock everybody. When she’d told our mother about her plan, our mother had said, “They won’t hire you. They don’t hire colored there.” Lily told her she was going to try anyway. Lily said that because she is brave, and unlike me, she doesn’t let anything stand in her way. Nothing.

  So then it was just me and Mrs. Baylor. I pictured her sitting in the breakfast nook, legs up on the padded bench, flipping through a Hollywood gossip magazine and sipping coffee out of one of my mother’s china cups. I stayed in the bedroom, thinking about Jennifer’s call an hour or two after the pool party incident. One of the kids who’d been there had given her a report on what happened after we left.

  First, Linda Cruz made it clear that she was Spanish and not Mexican and she couldn’t have colored people at her house either. So I’d better not come walking up to her front door because her father would just turn me around and send me on my way.

  Then Jilly Baker had said that Linda looked more Mexican than Spanish, and Linda said that was because she’d been at the beach a lot and her color wasn’t her real color.

  “What’s wrong with Mexican?” I’d asked.

  “Beats me,” Jennifer said.

  “I mean you get to speak Spanish and English,” I went on. “Wish I could speak two languages.”

  It was crazy. Well, they were pretty dark, the Cruz kids. But why did that always have to be a bad thing?

  I thought to go over to Jennifer’s to see if she felt like walking down to the library with me. But then I remembered she had to go to her little cousin’s birthday party. She was probably already gone.

  I headed to the kitchen, not sure what I was going to want once I got there. When I reached the hall, I heard Mrs. Baylor’s radio and felt disappointed. I was hoping she’d be dusting or something in another part of the house by then.

  I paused in the dining room. The small pull-down door that connected the built-in buffet in the dining room to the kitchen counter had not been closed all the way. Through the opening, I could see Mrs. Baylor. She wasn’t kicked back at the kitchen table sipping coffee. She was standing at the ironing board, pressing one of my father’s dress shirts. Every once in a while, she stopped to dip her hand in a small bowl and sprinkle water over the shirt. Occasionally, she reached for her smoldering cigarette resting in a Mason jar lid on the counter behind her. She’d take a long drag, lifting her chin and closing her eyes. Then, to avoid blowing smoke on Daddy’s clean shirt, she’d draw her lips to the side to exhale.

  A Pepsodent toothpaste jingle was playing and Mrs. Baylor was nodding her head to the beat of it. She sprinkled, she ironed a bit, she reached back to get her cigarette, she took a puff, she blew it out over her shoulder, then she started all over.

  “It’s not polite to spy on folks,” she said, making me jump back, startled. “What are you doing peeking through that little opening?” She sang this to me in her Jamaican way, then picked up her cigarette again. “Get in here and get whatever you want to get and then go on with you.”

  I closed the little door and stepped into the kitchen. She continued ironing as if I wasn’t there. I got a glass down from the cabinet and set it on the table.

  “I just want a glass of juice,” I said, though I didn’t really.

  She shrugged. “You don’t need permission from me.”

  Suddenly I was self-conscious about the way I’d opened the cabinet; the way I’d reached for a glass, then opened the refrigerator and got out the pitcher of juice.

  “You make sure you put that back,” she said.

  I was already going to put the pitcher back. Why wouldn’t I? That’s why I was nervous. She was always watching and measuring and waiting for me to make a mistake.

  “You don’t have home training?” Mrs. Baylor set the iron down firmly and stood with one hand on her hip. “You don’t know how to address a person?”

  I poured my juice. “Address?” I asked quietly.

  Mrs. Baylor shook her head slowly, tsking at the same time. “You don’t know how to say ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Baylor’ or ‘How you doin’?’”

  “Good afternoon,” I said, knowing it was too late and Mrs. Baylor probably wanted it to be too late.

  “Where’s your sister? I suppose she be in her bed getting her beauty rest.”

  “Lily left to see about a job.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Baylor lifted an eyebrow skeptically.

  “At Marcia Stevens.”

  “The boutique?”

  I nodded. She seemed disappointed.

  “They don’t hire Negroes at that place.”

  I said nothing.

  “What? She thinking she going to pass for white now?”

  I continued my silence.

  She flashed her gold-trimmed teeth and smacked her thigh. “That’s it, isn’t it? I am right about that.” She sighed and slowly shook her head. “I am not surprised. I’m not surprised about Miss Lily.”

  I didn’t like Mrs. Baylor calling my sister Miss Lily. Lily was just Lily. She never tried to be Miss anything.

  The phone rang. Mrs. Baylor answered it and I could tell it was my mother because Mrs. Baylor stopped to search for something in the freezer. I slipped out with my glass of juice.

  Once in my room, I sat down on the window seat and pulled the curtain back. I held my breath and listened. Soon I could hear the washing machine.

  I was alone. Just me and Mrs. Baylor—​and Oscar, who probably needed to be walked. I decided to take him for a stroll around the neighborhood.

  The Cruz boys, Anthony and Marcus, were in their front yard throwing a baseball back and forth. I thought I could get past them without being noticed, but then I heard, “That’s sure an ugly dog.”

  It was Anthony Cruz. I ignored him. If I weren’t a girl, he’d probably have liked to come over and give me a push or confront me with our faces only inches apart so I could feel his hot breath while he talked bad. But then I realized I was kind of going overboard in imagining too much of a confrontation. He wasn’t necessarily saying it meanly. He was more astonished.

  “That’s the way bulldogs look,” I said.

  Anthony caught the ball in his glove. He turned to me. “Why’d you get that kind of dog?”

  “It was mainly my sister’s idea.” Lily had read up on bulldogs and didn’t like that they had such a sad history of being used for bullbaiting and all. She started begging for one. She loved their little old man faces and their sad, wary expressions. Daddy finally broke down and gave Oscar to Lily for her fifteent
h birthday. Now we all loved Oscar. Daddy didn’t like the name at first, but Lily insisted. She said Oscar was a bulldog’s name and she had her heart set on naming him that.

  Anthony nodded.

  I had to pull at the leash because Oscar had other things to do, it seemed, and he didn’t want to stop. I’d seen Anthony Cruz before. Jennifer had pointed him out. He was cute, and Jennifer had a seventy percent crush on him, she admitted. Jennifer had a one hundred percent crush on Paul McCartney, so Anthony was kind of up there. I knew he lived on our street, but I’d never really thought about him. I checked out him and his brother now. Yes. They still looked Mexican to me even though their sister insisted they were all Spanish.

  “Can I pet him?” Anthony asked, surprising me.

  I hesitated, not knowing if he was being sincere. “Okay,” I said finally.

  Anthony stepped forward with his hand all ready to pet Oscar, but for some reason Oscar didn’t want any part of him. He actually bared his teeth and began to make this low, scary growl in his throat. He pulled at the leash in Anthony’s direction and I had to really hold on tight.

  “Whoa,” Anthony said. “I get the hint.”

  I laughed. That sounded so funny and grown-up and kind and perceptive, I started liking Anthony Cruz right then and there. But then I tried to stop, because I knew Jennifer already had a crush on him.

  “I know what happened at the Bakers’ yesterday,” he said. “My sister told me.”

  I looked at him closely to see if his face would reveal how he felt about it. I couldn’t tell. “Yeah. Well . . .” I suddenly felt self-conscious. I turned to go, yanking on the leash to pull Oscar after me and feeling Anthony Cruz’s eyes on my back. Maybe he would remember this—​me walking my dog past him and his brother throwing a baseball back and forth—​one day far into the future, after we were married. It would be a story to tell our children. I had to stop myself then, and remember that Jennifer had a seventy percent crush on him. He was off-limits, crushwise.

  I continued on my way, planning to go up Presidio to get back home instead of my own street so he wouldn’t think I was walking back and forth in front of his house hoping he’d talk to me again. If I were Lily, I’d have just the right quip for him. I’d be able to say something smart—​something that would lasso him in and make him mine. But then I’d have to explain all that to Jennifer, and she might not take it well.

  Mrs. Baylor was just leaving as I was coming up the walkway with Oscar. She had her purse over her arm and her son was waiting in the driveway in an idling Volkswagen. I peered into the car to get a good look at him in the shadowed interior. I wanted to see “Mr. Nigel Nigel Nigel,” as Lily called him. Mrs. Baylor had been in our house only a few weeks, but we’d heard her bragging to our mother about her beloved son, Nigel, a zillion times.

  “I’ve got an appointment and you don’t need to know where,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour or two. You got your piano lesson at three and your mama said you need to practice, especially with the recital coming up. Now I’m off. You better do your practicing.”

  The recital. I didn’t want to be in it. I hated piano lessons. I hated to practice. Plus, Jennifer had told me that this time Jilly Baker was going to be in it. She was a really good piano player, and now her teacher and my teacher, Mrs. Virgil, were going to join their recitals together. I didn’t even want to think about it. Or Mrs. Virgil. I didn’t care for her. Not as a person all by herself, but as a person in relation to me. She was a spitter. Almost everything she said came out on a spray of spit. She probably knew it and it was okay by her. Some spit even got on the piano keys. Then I’d have to play those keys and think, When are you leaving so I can run and wash my hands? It was torture.

  I didn’t care for her moles, either. How on earth had she gotten that many moles? They were of all sizes, all over her face. Some were big, some were just black dots, but there were so many, I sometimes couldn’t concentrate when she was talking to me because I was busy looking at them and wondering if she was completely aware of them and how she washed her face. Was she careful not to rub too hard and maybe rub one away? Then I imagined how that might sting.

  Oh, the misery of piano lessons.

  I checked Jennifer’s driveway. No car. Her mother had probably taken her to lunch at a restaurant after her appointment. When I was out with my mother at the department store and waiting for her to get her face powder mixed to just the right shade and it was going on and on, I would say, “Mom, can we get something to eat at Sutton’s?” Sutton’s is a cafeteria down the street from the department store, with trays that you slide down a steel counter to select just what you want for your entrée and side dish. And the desserts. So many desserts to choose from! And there’s a treasure chest by the door where you can reach in and pluck out a little souvenir. For free.

  But every time I asked if we could go there, after waiting through all the mixing of powder and the selection of stockings in just the right shade, where she’d slip her hand into the samples and turn them this way and that—​after I waited all this out without complaining—​she’d look at me and say, “We have food at home.”

  I’d think, How come Jennifer’s mother takes her to Sutton’s after shopping? How come the one time I’d been there it was with Jennifer’s mom? What was wrong with my family? We never did things like Jennifer’s family.

  When I asked Lily about this, she explained that our mother grew up poor in North Carolina, one of nine kids. And when you grow up poor, certain worries about money just stick with you.

  I went into our empty house.

  The piano looked just like it was waiting for me to sit down and start practicing “Für Elise.” I turned my back on it and sauntered down the hall and into my daddy’s office, where I wasn’t supposed to be. I stood there leaning against the closed door, my heart beating with excitement and the dread of being discovered.

  No. Daddy was off somewhere and Mrs. Baylor was at an appointment and my mother was at her gallery.

  I looked around, then scooted over to his desk, plopped down into his plush desk chair, and spun until I got sick of it. The room swam for a few moments after I stopped, but I soon got my equilibrium back. I opened some drawers, closed them, then lifted the corner of the blotter to look at the picture of my aunt Minerva, the subject of my new book, The Outside Child. Lily had overheard our parents discussing her once, and she’d filled me in.

  It seems Grandpa Willis had Aunt Minerva with this other woman, not Grandma Nell. This woman lived in the next county over from him and Grandma Nell, and Daddy didn’t even know about Minerva until he was in high school.

  I’d come across the picture of her under the ink blotter on Daddy’s desk the last time I’d sneaked into his office. I’d asked about the picture only because it had been hidden.

  “That’s Daddy’s sister,” Lily had told me.

  “I didn’t know he had a sister.”

  “That’s because Grandma Nell isn’t her mother. Her mother is this woman Grandpa Willis”—​she paused—​“had a thing with.”

  I knew what she was talking about. There was a time when I didn’t know anything. But now I knew just what Lily meant.

  I found the photo again under the blotter and slipped it into my shirt pocket. I wanted to look at it and look at it—​later, when it was just me and the picture and I wasn’t worried about anyone discovering me with it.

  Next, I picked up my daddy’s letter opener and ran my finger across its sharp tip. Then I started hooking paper clips together into a chain. I’d have to remember to unhook them before I left the room. After I got sick of making the paper clip chain, I checked the rest of the drawers looking for something else revealing. The top one was sticking a little, so I left it alone. Probably nothing but a pile of boring-looking business papers.

  I opened the top middle drawer. Nothing interesting. I was just about to close it when I spotted the corner of an envelope under the desk organizer. I pulled it out and s
tared at it. It was a letter, still sealed in a pink envelope. Paula Morrisy was the name of the sender. The return address was in Leimert Park. Who was Paula Morrisy and why was her unopened letter hidden under the desk organizer? A client, probably. But . . . something felt as if she wasn’t a client. A thank you note? No. It was shaped like a letter. I wondered if I should show it to Lily. Just show it to her. Maybe we could open it—​to see what it was, exactly.

  Then I had a better idea. I would read it after my daddy opened it himself—​now that I knew where it was. That was such a good plan, I couldn’t help smiling to myself.

  It smelled of perfume, I noticed. Something sweet. Too sweet. I didn’t like the fragrance. I stared at the name above the return address for a few moments longer. Then I slipped the letter back into its hiding place, making sure a corner was still showing, just the way I’d found it.

  I opened the bottom drawer—​the file drawer. They weren’t client files; they were for family, stuff like birth certificates and house insurance and life insurance and repair bills and receipts for major items like our refrigerator and television and washing machine. I picked up a file labeled Personal and opened it.

  My parents’ birth certificates were on top. They were listed as colored and their parents were listed as colored, too. And my father’s father’s occupation was barber. His family, the LaBranches, lived in Gueydan, a town in Vermilion Parish in Louisiana. Their language was listed as well: French. “Creole,” my mother had explained. Not the French of France. I liked looking at everyone’s birth certificates—​especially my parents’. Everything was so summed up about them on those pieces of paper.

  I’d never met my grandpa Willis or my daddy’s poor, cheated-on mother, Grandma Nell. They died before I was born.