I felt a stir of dread. I went up into the den, looked out the window toward Avalon, and saw nothing but palm trees and clear blue sky. Then I checked Jennifer’s house. Her family was gone. Probably on the trip to Catalina that Jennifer had mentioned a few days before. A ferry trip to Catalina, to go snorkeling. The whole family.
I returned to my bedroom to see Lily sitting cross-legged on her bed and talking on the phone to Nathan. “Stay away from Avalon,” she was saying. “Don’t go back. Promise me.” She looked over as if I was intruding on her, so I retreated to the den to sit on the couch and think.
Miss Cissy had her own theory about what was happening in her neighborhood. Mrs. Baylor told us what she’d said:
The police started this. Plain and simple. They hate colored people. They like stopping them. Especially if they are driving a nice car. They just love throwing them up against that nice car and patting them down.
Plus, they kept Marquette and his mother and his brother at the scene too long. And they manhandled Marquette’s mother (seen it with my own eyes) and one hit Marquette with the butt of his rifle for no reason. I was there. I seen that, too. Don’t believe me. I don’t care. There were plenty of witnesses to that. No reason at all. I’ma see what they going to put in the papers. Watch ’em make it all our fault. And don’t you believe them police reports. They lie just as easily as they breathe. Watch ’em make it somethin’ that it wasn’t. Watch ’em just lie.
I checked Jennifer’s driveway all afternoon, thinking they might come back early. I took Oscar out for a walk just to fill the time. Then I staked out the driveway from the porch with my book on my lap until Mrs. Baylor stuck her head out the door.
“Whatcha doing out here?”
“Just reading,” I said.
“You waitin’ on your little friend to get home, aren’t you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“She’ll be back and she’ll be askin’ you what on earth is goin’ on. She’ll want you to tell her everything that’s goin’ on with the colored folks.”
“But I don’t know anything.”
“That’s not gonna matter.”
I was quiet. After a while, I went inside to get something to eat and to not wait for Jennifer to come back.
It wasn’t until early evening that I heard their station wagon pull into their driveway. I was sprawled on the den sofa switching from Gunsmoke to the televised accounts of all the unrest—the same scene shot from the KTLA News helicopter shown over and over again. I turned off the light and stood at the window, watching Jennifer’s family unload their car.
I saw Jennifer jump on her daddy’s back while he was weighed down with a giant Eskimo cooler. He almost fell over and they both laughed.
I heard her mother say, “Jennifer!” She was trying to sound like she was scolding her, but I knew she wasn’t. I knew she was happy to see Jennifer so adored by her father. For them, all was happy. All would stay happy. I tried to feel that. I closed my eyes to help me feel what they felt.
But I already knew I was going to go through a rough, lonely patch. Linda Cruz would be taking my place. Jennifer would be Julie. Carla had stolen my role. And Lily would be leaving. How was I supposed to get through all of that?
Jennifer’s mother was still pretending to scold. “Your daddy’s tired. Let him be.” But Jennifer hung on anyway, and her father pretended to try to shake her off, which made her laugh and laugh. He started to trot around the front yard like a horse. Jennifer’s mother hauled two grocery bags out of the car and went into the house, ignoring them. She left the door open behind her, revealing a rectangle of welcoming light. Finally, Jennifer’s daddy—with Jennifer still clinging to his back—trotted inside.
The unrest was not stopping. It was going on and on and making the country watch and comment and predict and scratch their heads—as far as I could see.
First thing the next morning, I marched across the street and rang the bell. Jennifer opened the door. “Hi, Sophie,” she said, and stepped aside so I could enter. Jennifer’s mother suddenly appeared. She was putting her hand on my shoulder and looking at me with a face full of sympathy. “Oh, Sophie. How are you?”
“I’m . . . fine,” I said, a little puzzled.
“Isn’t it terrible what’s going on? I’m in shock.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s terrible.”
“But why? Why are the colored people doing all that . . . rioting? I’m trying to understand. Do you know anything? I mean, do you know people over there or maybe have relatives?” She was looking at me closely and with hope—as if I could clear things up for her, tell her the inside story as to why colored people were acting up in this way. She continued to study me behind glasses that seemed to make her eyes big and owlish and full of expectation.
“I don’t know anyone from there. Only Mrs. Baylor,” I said. “And she doesn’t know anything either.”
Mrs. Abbott fell silent, and I felt as if I was letting her down, and also letting down Jennifer’s grandmother, who was now standing in the kitchen doorway drying a cup. She looked disappointed, too.
Mrs. Abbott shook her head slowly. “Such a shame.” She turned to Jennifer. “You certainly won’t be going anywhere today.”
“Rehearsals start today,” Jennifer protested. She shot me a quick apologetic look, then said, “Can you help me with my lines?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling surprisingly grateful that I still possessed some play-related connection to her—that she was allowing me this.
I turned to Mrs. Abbott. “The . . .” I paused before I said the word riots. “The riots are far away,” I said, as if I had a special duty to calm everyone down. “It’s not near here at all.”
“Of course, but we can’t be sure that this . . . this rioting is going to stay far away.”
What could I say to that? I didn’t like the feeling I had talking to them, that everything was a little bit my responsibility, or that I had some special knowledge about what was going on. Because I had no special knowledge. I was just me.
Finally, Jennifer motioned for me to follow her. “Come upstairs. I got something for you.”
That was a thrill. I wasn’t forgotten. She retrieved a small white bag from atop her dresser and handed it to me. Inside was a pair of white shell earrings. The tiny shells dangled from a silver chain. But they were for pierced ears and mine weren’t pierced. “Thank you. These are really pretty,” was all I said.
I saw another small white bag on her dresser. “Who’s that for?”
“Oh, that’s for Linda.”
CHAPTER 24
Where’s Nathan?
* * *
SOMEONE WAS SHAKING me awake. I felt a breath on my face. “Get up,” my sister whispered. “Come out with us. We’re going to sit outside and see if we can watch the KTLA helicopter circling over Avalon.”
I came up on my elbow. Lily was motioning for me to follow her.
We slipped out the window and joined Nathan on our hillside. He was quietly gazing up at the night sky and the circling helicopter. There was a charred smell in the air, faint but evident, and a light breeze on my arms and face. I was just in my summer pajamas.
We settled next to Nathan. “You know what I’m thinking?” He glanced sideways at Lily and I saw him holding back a smile.
“What?” she asked.
“This is what I’m thinking.” He looked at me mischievously, as if we were in on the same joke, then back at Lily. “Now, me. If I was to be driving down the street on Avalon, all I’d have to do is hold three fingers out my car window and yell, ‘Blood brother!’ and nobody would mess with me. ’Cause I’m a blood brother. Anybody can see.” He nudged Lily with his shoulder and they did that back and forth for a bit. “But you, my dear—you better watch out coming to my side of town.”
Lily laughed. And I laughed. And then we watched the faint glow of the fires in the distance.
“What happened with your neighbor, Mr. Daw
son?” Lily eventually asked Nathan.
“I checked on him this morning. He was actually just getting ready to go to Boys Market on Crenshaw. He was going to drive himself out of the neighborhood—just like that.” I knew about Mr. Dawson and that he was white. Lily had already told me about him. He was an elderly man who’d refused to move when the neighborhood started going colored. He’d given Nathan gardening jobs when Nathan was in high school. His wife had died, and he had no children, so there was no one to check on him.
“So what did you do?”
“I got his list and drove over there myself. Before work.”
“You’re my hero,” she said, and they both laughed. She kissed him on the cheek.
Nathan moved on to another topic. “They had a community meeting in Athens Park today.”
“How’d it go?”
“Okay, until some guy got up on the stage and started shouting what he and his aces were going to do to the white communities nearby. Then some fool started yelling, ‘Burn, baby, burn!’ The reporters and cameramen turned their attention to him and that’s what they decided to put on the television coverage. Over and over.”
“Makes for better news,” Lily said.
Nathan looked at her in surprise. “Now you’re learning,” he said.
Lily looked pleased.
“Anyway, he was probably a plant.”
“A plant?”
“Yeah, they do that sometimes, the police. To stir things up or shape public opinion.”
Lily looked at Nathan with absolute awe.
They were quiet for a while. “I’m going to interview a few people who are afraid to go out of their houses for Cal’s student paper. Their stories are going untold.”
“Don’t,” Lily said.
“Why?”
“It’s dangerous.”
Nathan looked at her as if he was debating whether to counter that. Then he seemed to move on to something else. “So you told your mother?”
Lily didn’t answer. She nodded toward me. A small movement, but I saw it.
“We have no secrets from Sophia,” he joked.
She shook her head again and the subject was closed.
“Stay in Leimert Park again tonight,” Lily said.
“I’m going home. I’ll be fine.”
First thing the next morning, I went into the den in my pajamas and turned on the CBS Morning News while the rest of the house still slept. I knew that later Daddy was coming with money. I never thought about money, so I was surprised when I overheard my mother say to him on the telephone, “The house doesn’t pay for itself. The supermarket doesn’t give away free food.”
The newscaster was calling Friday night the worst evening of the unrest. More looting and burning in the business section of Watts, the neighborhood where Nathan and Mrs. Baylor lived. He listed the events of last night’s melee: cars had been stoned on Imperial, a supermarket on Imperial and Success was firebombed, and looters were running off with cases of soda pop and beer. A barbershop had its windows broken out, even though it had a sign that said NEGRO OWNED. The KTLA helicopter had captured all of it on film and sent the images out to the whole country.
I pulled an Oreo out of my robe pocket and twisted it apart. Then I raked off the filling with my two front teeth, as I always did. I heard water in the pipes and knew Mrs. Baylor was up (she had decided to stay the weekend and return home when things died down), so I scooted back to my bedroom before she could start scolding me about sitting in front of the television still in my pajamas and with unbrushed teeth. If she knew I was eating cookies for breakfast, there’d be an even sterner lecture.
I washed and dressed, then headed to the kitchen to sit at the table and eat a bowl of Cheerios.
“I can’t reach Nathan,” Mrs. Baylor said as she hung up the kitchen phone, more to herself than to me. She seemed fixed to the spot. She looked puzzled.
I saw what looked like an invitation among the stack of mail on the table. The return address was the Mansfields’. Lily was right—we were invited to their big end-of-summer bash. I wondered if it was going to be one of those boring affairs where either there was no one my age to talk to except Robin or she’d have her own friends there to talk to and I’d be ignored.
Mrs. Baylor was still next to the wall phone, looking toward the kitchen window as if lost in thought.
“Is your sister up yet?” she asked.
“I think she might be working today, so she has to get up pretty soon.”
Mrs. Baylor crossed the room to the dishwasher and began to unload it, but her movements were kind of mechanical, as if her thoughts were on something else. I supposed she was staying busy to keep her mind off things.
Finally, Lily stumbled into the kitchen in white jeans and a T-shirt, but her hair was a tangled mess. She and Nathan had still been talking on our hillside when I fell asleep.
“I need coffee,” she said, taking a mug out of the cabinet. She picked up the percolator and poured a cup.
“Are you getting ready to go to work?” Mrs. Baylor asked.
“No work today. People are a bit skittish about going out shopping, I guess.”
“What time did Nathan leave here last night?” Mrs. Baylor asked.
Lily looked surprised that Mrs. Baylor knew Nathan had been there. “Midnight,” she said with her head in the refrigerator, looking for the small carton of half and half.
“Did he say he was going straight home?”
“He didn’t say, but I assumed he was going home. I asked him to stay with his friend, the one who lives in Leimert Park, but he said he would be fine. I thought he meant he would be fine at home.” Lily finished pouring the cream into her coffee. She put a teaspoon of sugar in the cup and stirred. She took a sip. Suddenly, it seemed to dawn on her that Mrs. Baylor was asking all these questions because she was worried.
“Are you trying to reach him?”
Mrs. Baylor didn’t answer, but her expression showed her concern. Lily ran her fingers through her hair and sat down at the table. She looked thoughtful as she quietly sipped her coffee. “Maybe he’s already left for work. He has a painting job off of Adams today.”
Mrs. Baylor went back to unloading the dishwasher, her expression grim.
“I can drive you home,” Lily said. “Then you can look around and get some idea where he might be.”
I glanced at Lily quickly. Would she really be willing to drive into Watts? Now?
“You can’t do that,” Mrs. Baylor said.
“I can use my mother’s car. She’s meeting with my father this morning, so she won’t be needing it for a while.”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Baylor looked doubtful.
“I want to go,” I said, happy that I was already dressed.
My sister turned toward me. “You’re staying home.”
“But I want to see what’s going on.”
“I can take you a safer way,” Mrs. Baylor said to Lily, now warming to the idea.
Lily hurried back to our room for her purse and keys. She’d secretly had extra keys made for our parents’ cars ages ago. My sister always thought ahead.
I got up and walked down the hall as if I was going to my room. But then I took a detour. I glanced over my shoulder at the kitchen and quickly eased out the dining room door. The coast was clear.
Once in the yard, I slipped around the side of the house and through the door that led to the garage. Our mother’s car was unlocked. I got into the back seat and scrunched down onto the floor. I just had to pray that they wouldn’t look back there and catch me.
Soon I heard Lily approaching, shaking the keys in her hand nervously. Mrs. Baylor climbed into the car on the passenger side and placed a floppy, wide-brimmed hat on her lap. I flattened myself on the floor as much as possible. Their doors slammed at the same time.
“My mother is in the shower,” Lily said in a low voice, as if she could be easily heard.
She adjusted her sunglasses.
“I’ll probably get into trouble for this,” Mrs. Baylor said.
“I’ll explain.”
“Let’s switch,” Mrs. Baylor said. “As soon as we turn the corner.”
“Why?”
“It’s not gonna be safe for you. Some people might think you’re white.”
“Nobody’s going to think I’m white. Colored people know light skin from white.” Lily sounded annoyed.
“That ain’t necessarily always the case,” Mrs. Baylor said.
Lily pulled over on Angeles Vista. I held my breath and for some reason squeezed my eyes shut. They switched seats, and strangely, the sound of the motor—the turns and rhythm—sounded more confident with Mrs. Baylor behind the wheel.
She reached for the hat. “Put this on,” she said to Lily. “And pull it down a bit.”
My sister didn’t argue. I was sure her nervousness was growing as we drove farther and farther east.
There was no way I wasn’t going to look around and see what I could see. When Vernon was about to cross Central, I sat up.
Lily heard me and whipped around. Mrs. Baylor looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Oh, we in for it now,” she said.
I didn’t know if she was talking about the people in her neighborhood or my mother.
“What the hell,” Lily said.
“I wanted to come,” I whined.
Lily blew out air and shook her head. “Oh, shit,” she said, then looked quickly at Mrs. Baylor. “Sorry.”
“What’s done is done.” Mrs. Baylor began to look around, her mouth dropping open. I followed her gaze and was astounded. I expected to see police cars and newsmen everywhere, but the street looked empty, with a dangerous kind of emptiness. The entire front plate glass window of Pep Boys was blown out. Two kids, not much older than me, were carrying out batteries and car covers. A building that was once a barbershop was burned to the ground—the only thing left was the barber pole. I could see a group of kids milling about in the glass and trash and charred wood that littered the streets. It was like a party among the ruins where they were the only ones still celebrating, but I didn’t believe their bravado. Where was the National Guard? I’d heard on the news that they were coming. Maybe there weren’t enough soldiers for them to be everywhere.
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