It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English

  Mrs. Baker gave Lily a long look. Lily held her gaze with a tiny smile on her face. “I mean, you walked by the first court where that blond girl was practicing her serve. You walked by the second court. You walked by the third court, and came directly to this court. What were you thinking? How did you make that decision?”

  Mrs. Baker said nothing. She continued to meet Lily’s gaze—​maybe hoping to intimidate her

  “That’s what I thought,” Lily said. She laughed, sauntered over to the serving line, picked up a ball, gazed at it, tossed it in the air, and whacked it with a flat thud smack in the center of the racket.

  “I think I’m going to be here for a while,” she called to Mrs. Baker. “But you’re welcome to stay and watch.” She turned to me. “Go get that water. It’s hot out here.”

  We laughed all the way to 31 Flavors. At first Mrs. Baker had seemed determined to wait us out, but when Lily and I settled in a shady area of the court to rest and sip our water, she packed up her knitting in a huff and marched off with her daughters.

  “Isn’t that park a public park? Don’t our parents pay taxes? And what kind of lie was that? Her daughters have a tennis lesson scheduled. How can you schedule a lesson at a public park? What the hell,” Lily said. She started laughing again, and that made me laugh, too. “How about that funny little hairdo she had? I should have poured my water over those little curls. Wouldn’t that have been hilarious?”

  I imagined it and burst out laughing again.

  The air of the ice cream shop felt cool against my hot skin. The big tubs of pastel-colored ice cream looked thrilling. I couldn’t wait to taste the sweet creaminess of butter pecan. I looked around, and there was Nathan. In the far corner. Nathan—​and a girl—​sitting at one of the small, round tables. She was petite and brown skinned. She was wearing a high ponytail and headband. Very pretty.

  I nudged Lily. “There’s Nathan.” She followed my pointing finger, and her lips parted a little bit. She swallowed, reached for a numbered ticket from a little red dispenser on the glass case, and turned her back to him. She put both palms on the case and peered in at the ice cream. “Mmm, maybe I’ll try pistachio for a change,” she said, tapping the glass over the big tub of pistachio.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  She smiled and glanced at the small wrought iron tables and chairs just outside the door.

  “Let’s sit outside after we get our cones.”

  As soon as we exited the shop, I headed for an empty table and pulled out the chair facing the parking lot. She pulled out the one facing the shop. We ate silently for a few minutes, still drained from the heat.

  “They came to our court because we were the only colored,” I said, then twirled my ice cream against my tongue.

  Lily looked past me into the shop and shrugged.

  “They didn’t want us to play,” I added.

  “Not if it meant they’d have to wait.”

  Two little girls in pink polka-dot sundresses toddled by, holding on to their mother’s hands.

  “Twins,” we said at the same time, and then did a high-five. “You owe me a Coke,” we said in unison. Lily started to laugh. I liked that she was having fun with me. Maybe she’d miss me, after all, when she went off to Georgia.

  “That must be his girlfriend,” she said.

  “Whose girlfriend?”

  “Nathan’s.” She stood up.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Nothing. I’m just ready to go.”

  I looked over my shoulder into the shop. Yes, the girl was pretty, with her serious brown eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. They were deep in conversation. She laughed at something he said, then shook her head from side to side.

  “Quit staring,” Lily said. “Let’s go.”

  “She’s pretty,” I said.

  Lily sniffed.

  We passed a lazy, quiet hour with Lily reading The House of Mirth on the patio chaise and me in our room poring over my script, then I put it aside and decided to take Oscar for a walk. The house had its usual empty feeling. My father had commandeered his car as soon as we got back as if he had somewhere important to go, and my mother was off to her gallery.

  Oscar perked up when the patio door slammed behind me. I could barely get his collar on because he kept licking my hand. By the time I had him on the leash, he was pulling toward the backyard gate.

  Lily had been reading The House of Mirth all week. I asked her if I could read it after she was finished, but she told me it was probably too grown-up for me and I wouldn’t like it. I told her I would and she couldn’t know what I would like or not like.

  To annoy her, I looked over and said, “Are you upset that you saw Mrs. Baylor’s son with that girl?” Oscar sniffed around my tennis shoes.

  “I’m reading,” she said. And I knew she was not going to get into it.

  I was heading back up Montego Drive toward home when Nathan pulled up alongside me in his Volkswagen. He leaned over and rolled down the passenger window.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Oscar pulled at the leash. I pulled back.

  “Anybody home? I need to get my second tarp. I accidentally left it in your backyard.” He flashed his winning smile. “Thought I’d only need one for this other job I’m doing today, but it’s bigger than I thought.”

  “Lily’s there,” I said.

  “Great.” He started to pull away.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, even as I questioned myself about what I was going to do. “Um, we saw you at Thirty-One Flavors.”

  He looked puzzled. “When?”

  “Just a little while ago.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and Lily.”

  He looked off for a second. He sighed. “Oh.” He ran his hand over his head. “Well.”

  “Is that your girlfriend?”

  “She was.”

  “So you’re just friends now?”

  He drummed his steering wheel with his forefingers and bit his lower lip as if he was suddenly in deep thought. Coming out of it, he said, “Well, I’d better go get my tarp.” And he drove off up the hill.

  When I got back to the house, I led Oscar straight to the backyard. Nathan was squatting over his tarp, folding it into a neat square. Lily, with her eyes fixed on her book, was busy ignoring him. I pulled a dog biscuit out of my pocket and held it out so Oscar could jump up on his short little legs to try to get it. I had to remember to jerk my hand away from his sharp teeth. He looked so funny, I had to laugh.

  Nathan smiled up at me. He got the tarp into a neat package and stood. He walked over to Lily, holding the folded tarp pressed against his chest.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Oh, hey.” She glanced at him, then went back to her book.

  He reached out and took it from her hands. She sighed and watched him read the title.

  “The House of Mirth,” he said. “Sad ending, but let me not give it away. I’ll say no more.”

  “So, in other words, you’ve read it.”

  He nodded and saluted her, then turned to go, but Oscar darted over to him. Nathan squatted to scratch his neck. “Nice dog,” he said. Then he was gone.

  I went into the house, through the living room, out the front door, and straight to Jennifer’s. She opened the door and stepped out. We sat down on her porch.

  “My sister likes Mrs. Baylor’s son,” I told her.

  “Wow!” Her eyes lit up. She rubbed her palms together. “How do you know?”

  “I can tell. And it’s true love. I know that already.”

  “Give me the details,” Jennifer said. “And I’ll tell you if it’s true love or not.”

  I told her what I had observed: Lily was always flustered around him but trying to pretend she wasn’t. She didn’t even know him but she got jealous when she saw him with another girl. And she tried to be around him but acted as if she wasn’t trying to be around him.

  Jennifer grinned, thrilled. “She’s falling in love! Wh
at’s your mom going to say?”

  “My mother’s not going to know.”

  “Would she mind?”

  “Yeah, she’d mind.”

  “Why? You told me he’s at UC Berkeley. He’s gotta be smart to go to UC Berkeley.”

  “That’s not enough for my mother. And . . .” I didn’t want to tell Jennifer the other reason. It felt shameful and embarrassing—​something white people wouldn’t understand. But I blurted it out anyway. “He’s dark skinned.”

  Jennifer frowned. “So?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” It was the kind of thing that nobody talked about openly. It felt like I was letting her in on a secret. “See, light-skinned colored people almost always marry light-skinned colored people on purpose. So they’ll have light-skinned kids.”

  “Why?

  “I can’t explain it. Nobody admits it, but I’ve seen it—​a lot. And Lily told me about a Negro college that makes you send your picture when you apply, and if you’re darker than a paper bag, you don’t get in.” It embarrassed me to say this and I wished I hadn’t.

  Jennifer dropped her mouth open and her eyes got big. “Really?” She looked down and we sat there in silence for a moment.

  I changed the subject. “Wonder who else is trying out for Olivia.”

  She smiled slyly. “I found out.”

  “Who?”

  “Guess.”

  “Don’t make me guess.”

  “Deidre and her friend Carla.”

  My heart sank. I expected to have competition, but knowing who it was made it more real. There were probably going to be a lot of folks trying out for Olivia. But that part was mine. It was mine already. It had to be.

  “Don’t worry. I bet you’ll get it,” Jennifer said.

  I wondered. I looked over at her to see if I could read her face, but Jennifer had turned her attention to a mosquito bite on her ankle. She slapped it. “My mother said I shouldn’t scratch.”

  I looked more closely. The bite was now an angry red splotch trimmed in yellow. “That kind of looks infected. Better leave it alone.”

  She stared at it again and gave it another slap.

  I walked through my front door to the sound of the telephone ringing, so I picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Sophia.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Nathan. May I speak to Lily?”

  I put the receiver down and went in search of her. She was no longer on the lounge chair in the backyard. She wasn’t in our room. I finally found her in the den, on the couch, feet curled under her, watching TV.

  “Nathan wants to speak with you,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “Who?”

  “Nathan. He’s on the telephone. He wants to speak to you.”

  She reached for the telephone on the end table beside her. I saw her swallow. She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver and said, “Go hang up the other phone. And you’d better hang it up.” She squinted up at me. “I’ll know if you don’t.”

  I didn’t listen in. I had more important things to do.

  I had to memorize Olivia’s lines. And I’d decided to memorize everyone else’s lines, as well. But I needed a book on acting. I needed to get back to the library.

  CHAPTER 13

  Suspicion

  * * *

  LILY IMMEDIATELY STARTED sneaking around with Mrs. Baylor’s son. It was the backdrop to my days—​watching how she did it. I figured her methods might one day come in handy for me. He’d tap on our bedroom window at night, after we’d gone to bed, and I’d peek from under my covers to see her get up, already dressed, quietly tiptoe to the bedroom window, tug it open, and, after glancing back at me (I managed to close my eyes just in time), climb out.

  That first time, I got up and settled on the window seat to see what they were up to. They sat shoulder to shoulder at the top of the small hillside behind our house. The moon was full, and my sister and Nathan were a vision under its light. I could hear them murmuring back and forth, back and forth. Occasionally I heard Lily’s giggle mingled with his laugh, and I thought, that’s what I want to do when I fall in love—​just sit on a hillside, shoulder to shoulder, and talk and laugh into the night.

  I pretended to be asleep when she climbed back in. She said nothing about it when she awakened with a stretch the next morning. I said nothing about it, also.

  Then there was the telephone. How many times did she drag it into the bathroom to murmur and giggle for hours? Not the giggles of girlfriend to girlfriend. Giggles with a different quality to them altogether.

  And then there were the times she called home to announce that she’d be spending the night at Lydia’s. That’s where he must have picked her up for their dates, I decided.

  Finally, I asked her outright: “Lily, are you seeing Mrs. Baylor’s son?” She was trying on several work outfits, deciding what to wear with her new tan.

  Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and her whole face assumed a kind of slyness: squinted eyes, pursed lips. “He has a name.”

  “Are you seeing Nathan?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  I didn’t want to reveal my observations because they might make her craftier, so I said, “I was just wondering.”

  “So you think it’s your business?”

  “Mom’s going to be mad. If she finds out.”

  “She’ll just have to be mad, then.”

  CHAPTER 14

  China Cup

  * * *

  SOMETHING HAPPENED THAT took my mind off Lily’s business. Something I’d never tell Jennifer. She had a perfect family, and I’d be embarrassed to have her know what was going on in mine.

  It was the usual way bad things happen: you’re always in the middle of other stuff. I should have known that what my father was doing wouldn’t just dangle there in our lives and go unnoticed, or that if I didn’t think about it, it would go away. That wasn’t going to happen. It was going to be a big interruption. It was going to have consequences.

  I was beginning to realize that there was a difference between my mother’s public face and what she thought her world was and what was really going on. I was amazed over and over when I passed her room and saw her sitting at her desk shuffling her important papers around or reading them, looking so confident and assured about her life, that she chose not to see inconvenient things.

  So first, there was this happy, peaceful lull: me studying my lines, since I was going to be Olivia by being better than everyone else; Lily pretending she was not seeing Mrs. Baylor’s son; my mother pretending that her life was perfect and she had everything figured out; days going by without one cutting remark from Mrs. Baylor about my lack of friends, and specifically colored friends.

  Then, one evening, it happened. Or the beginning of it happened. I’d put the script aside and was sitting at my desk painting the kitchen scene from Anne of Green Gables in my diorama. I liked what I had done so far, having made sure that I’d penciled it in first so all mistakes could be erased before I painted it. I looked forward to showing my creation to Jennifer and seeing the expression on her face.

  Lily was sitting on her bed with her back to the wall, reading.

  The telephone rang and part of me listened to see who it was going to be for and kind of hoped it wouldn’t be Jennifer calling, because I was busy and didn’t want to be interrupted.

  Soon I heard my mother stomping up the three stairs that led up to our den. And that didn’t sound good. My heart began to beat fast. Apparently, she was looking for my father.

  She must have found him because she screamed so loudly that even the Bakers down the street probably could have heard her. “Please do not have your whore call this house!”

  Lily closed her book and we hurried out to the hall. I could hear my mother’s hysteria and my father’s deafening silence. She repeated her command, but this time with a space between each carefully articulated word: “Do. Not. Have.
Your. Whore. Call. This. House!” My mother did not care that we could hear her. She did not care if Mrs. Baylor could hear her. She did not care if all the neighbors on Montego Drive could hear her. She did not want Daddy’s whore calling the house. Period.

  I said to Lily, who was now standing behind me with her hands on my shoulders, “Daddy has a whore?” I knew who the whore was but I was pretending I didn’t know that lady—​who didn’t look like what I thought a whore would look like—​was my daddy’s whore. She looked regular. She wasn’t prettier than my mother, who still had her Dorothy Dandridge kind of beauty. But she was younger.

  Lily didn’t answer me. “You don’t need to worry about it,” she said quietly. “Don’t think about it.”

  But I did think about it. If that woman I saw was my father’s whore, this meant he could start to like her so much, he might just fall in love with her and then marry her and then we would have a whore for a stepmother. I stood there conjuring up new worries.

  The voices quieted and then there was silence. Lily and I went back to what we’d been doing.

  For the next few days my mother and father acted as if the other were invisible. My mother was busier than ever. My father was absent as much as possible.

  By the following Saturday things were nearly normal again. Or so I thought. I’d forgotten that trouble always comes unexpectedly. We’d just sat down at the breakfast table together. And that was promising, as far as I could see. The whole house seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. Mrs. Baylor had just gone out the door and climbed into Nathan’s car to begin her weekend. She’d be returning Monday morning. Nathan had been picking her up those days. And standing on our porch, craning his neck to catch sight of Lily.