by Tayari Jones
“Like it, ma’am?” the hovering dressmaker had asked.
Her mother, never a diplomat, had been looking in the mirror. “I hope they don’t mistake me for a maid,” she’d said, laughing, ignoring the wounded seamstress’s face.
The cream Chanel was hung next in the closet, followed by a dozen more designer suits and dresses. The underwear came next, Veronica layering them carefully in the drawers, then her jewelry box, which went on the dresser in front of the photographs. After sliding the empty suitcases under the bed, she attended to her boxes (sent from Jamaica by a cousin several years before), most still sealed with the original tape. She opened the smallest of the boxes, the one with her family photos, another ritual never neglected. Removing the bubble wrap from the first, she placed it on the dresser. She was sitting on her father’s knee, his handsome brown face looking into the camera as if he were posing alone. It was followed by a photo of her holding hands with her older brother Ralph, her parents’ favorite and now a neurologist. With her sleeve, she wiped the glass over another: she was a baby in the arms of Nanny Brown. Tall and black in a starched white uniform, the woman’s prim smile hid the tongue that was forever quick to judge and slow to forgive.
“Bitch,” Veronica muttered as she set the picture beside the others.
Her heart pumped with guilty pleasure at the comment. Normally tight-lipped, comfortable with deception, she’d been having a recent urge to speak hard truths. Not unlike the crude remarks she’d abhorred in her recent neighborhoods—ugly names that had started leaping from her lips like unruly children. She’d murmured the word slut in reference to a neighbor the week before, loud enough to be heard and cursed out, and a creditor with an Indian accent she’d called a coolie. She was starting to get accustomed to her new habit, even a little proud. At seventy, she reasoned, she’d earned the right.
A cry came from the room next door—or was it her imagination? Rubbing a stab of arthritis in her knee, Veronica tiptoed to the old lady’s door. Only a soft wheezing emerged from the darkness and she returned to her room.
Ripping open another of her boxes, she removed a photo album. About to place it in its designated drawer, she sat on the bed and opened it to the pictures of her European trip, the high point of what had been up to then a monotonous life. Financed by her inheritance after her mother’s death, the trip thirteen years before had taken her first to London where she’d stayed with Ralph and his British wife. She’d moved on after two weeks, taking the Chunnel train to France. As she turned the pages to the Eiffel Tower, followed by the Colosseum and the Acropolis, she remembered how wildly courageous it had felt to travel alone, to be free. She touched a snapshot of Christos, a shoemaker in Athens who’d made love to her twice, who knew just enough English to say she looked Greek.
The skyscrapers of New York sprang from the next page, sprang with the same energy that had rippled up from its sidewalks into her feet. How she’d loved the city when she arrived from Heathrow! No one had stared, no one had judged. They were too busy living their lives. She’d planned to spend a week there before returning to Jamaica but kept extending her stay, living first in the Waldorf Astoria (a rash decision, even she had to admit), then in a small hotel in Brooklyn, visiting museums and parks, once the site of the World Trade Center attack.
One morning she’d awakened to a thought. With her parents gone and the family home sold, her job handed over to her assistant, she had nothing to go back to in Jamaica. There were few jobs to be had, especially at her age, and even if she found work, there’d be no safety net when she retired. After her money was gone, where would she be without her parents to fall back on? Everyone in New York seemed to be working, and in retirement they had an infrastructure: Social Security and Medicare. The brash courage she’d had in Europe would pull her through. She would stay in America—on her visitor’s visa.
The idea was naïve rather than courageous, made by a person with little experience operating outside of her island bubble, no one to advise her that she was about to step on to a path that would spiral—ever so slowly and ever so surely—downward.
With her inheritance dwindling, Veronica’s decision to work had started her descent. At the suggestion of a Trinidadian dry-cleaning clerk, a younger, single man who flirted with her, she’d started giving evening classes to West Indian children—quiet, sporadic work that didn’t feel illegal. Her clients were blue collar, the apartments smelling of garlic and curry, but she’d swallowed her pride and arrived punctually at their doors.
Shortly before her six-month visa was to expire, an African woman on a bus had asked her where Flatbush Avenue was. “My husband need a coat,” the woman had explained, indicating the much older man beside her. An unfortunate arranged marriage, Veronica had decided—or maybe a convenient one. That night another idea had blossomed and she’d invited her dry-cleaning friend to dinner. When he appeared in the restaurant, his shiny suit and pointed-toed shoes had alarmed her but she’d soldiered on with her mission.
“My visa is running out,” she’d announced while he was attacking a chicken bone.
“So you going illegal?” the man had countered. “You sure you want to do that? I is a citizen, but I know how it go. This ain’t no easy country and you all by yourself. People who grow up soft like you don’t know how to survive here. Next thing, they throw you in jail and deport you.” He’d shaken his head. “You come like a one-eye man in a four-eye country.”
She’d screwed up her courage, her stomach already in a knot. “That’s why I want to get a green card. I was wondering—would you consider . . . I could marry you.”
“What kind of money you talking?” he’d asked eventually, examining his long pinky nail. Two thousand dollars later she’d moved into his filthy apartment, spending her first week cleaning, relieved he was rarely home.
In for penny, in for pound, she’d told herself. Wearing the Chanel suit for the city hall ceremony, she’d promised to love, honor, and cherish Allan for as long as they both should live. She told her brother she’d married on an impulse. It had felt like lying to her parents, disagreeable but necessary. There were no photographs of the wedding, the celibate marriage, or the husband who’d disgusted her.
“My mother want me to come down to Atlanta,” he’d told her after he lost his job. “She have a friend can give me a work.” With the last interview yet to come, Veronica had gone south with him on a Greyhound bus, vowing to shake off his poverty as soon as she had her card.
Betty, Allan’s mother, only a few years older than Veronica, hadn’t seemed perturbed that her son had married for money. It was she who’d suggested that her daughter-in-law apply to Macy’s.
“Like how you dignified,” she’d told her. “You going to look good in black.” Macy’s had been delighted to hire Veronica, now the owner of a work permit. She was just the kind of person we like in the Macy’s family, according to the HR woman.
The last immigration interview had gone well, Veronica telling the Atlanta officer it was love at first sight. A few months and a green card later, she’d moved into her own apartment, having decided to stay in Atlanta because it was cheaper than New York, the weather warmer—and she had a job. The album started filling again with photographs she’d taken from her new Nissan: the CNN building, the Coca-Cola Museum, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthplace, some sent to her brother to let him know she was fine, despite her divorce.
Pulling a nightgown out of a drawer, Veronica rubbed the scar on her spine where she’d had back surgery two years before. She’d been forced to quit her job to have it, the HR woman telling her, sorry, she was really only a part-time worker. After her recovery, it had been nearly impossible to get work. Macy’s wasn’t hiring; the public schools didn’t want her. The only job she’d found was sorting clothes in a thrift store, but her back had started acting up again and she’d had to leave.
The words of a colleague at Macy’s came back as Veronica headed for the bathroom. “Backache is just about s
tress,” the makeup artist had said.
There’d been stress all right, beginning with the medical bills from the surgery, even with Medicare. She’d added them to the credit card invoices that listed the temptations America had thrown at her. The creditors’ calls were the most stressful, though. Arrogant young people who addressed her on the phone as if she were a criminal, especially the IRS man who sounded like he was wearing a suit but was probably in shirtsleeves in a cubicle. They had no feelings, saying they’d take her to court. She, whose father had been a lawyer!
Ralph had advised her to invest her inheritance: “You don’t want to end up in the poor house.”
His wife had added with her all-knowing smile, “And you wouldn’t want to depend on anyone, would you?”
Financial advice was now too little, too late for a woman who’d spent almost six decades living rent-free in her family home, one maid to cook her meals and another to launder her clothes.
“Why waste your money on an apartment when we have lots of space?” her father had argued, a lawyer used to winning.
Her low salary had been spent on books, her car, and a few trips to relatives in Canada and Miami. She’d seen no reason to save, having been well trained by parents who’d embedded the message that women didn’t need to handle the finances. That was the man’s job.
“How come you never married?” her mother had asked when Veronica was about to turn fifty. They’d been drinking tea on the veranda and her mother had lowered her voice after the maid left.
“I never wanted to get married,” she’d retorted. “And no one asked me.”
She was lying on both counts. Other women’s engagement rings had released bile in her stomach; wedding receptions made her feel sick. Two men had actually proposed to her but she’d rejected them both. One had been too dark, the other unable to pronounce an H (her parents would have been horrified). She’d never invited them home and had told herself they’d only proposed because of her class and color.
Veronica clicked on the bathroom light and placed her cosmetics bag on the top of the toilet tank. The room was a cramped, dark closet and there were signs of mold around the tub, the house cleaner obviously unsupervised. Leaning into the mirror above the sink, the aging woman stroked the dark spots on her cheeks. She’d have to wear a hat when she went outside.
After her ablutions, she returned to her room and rubbed ointment into her joints. Tomorrow she’d go for a walk, she decided as she turned off the lamp, take a look at the azaleas and dogwoods in bloom, and if she could get away on Sunday, she’d go to the church on the corner that she’d seen from the taxi.
She was sure of one outing: as soon as the day worker came on Monday, she’d find a library to check the online dating site where she had her profile. She’d posted a better photograph of herself recently, one with her head tilted up, a glamour shot she’d had done in a mall. Someone might have written her by now. The world was full of desperate people. There might yet be an old man somewhere who needed taking care of—who might leave her a house and some cash when he died. She’d tell him she loved him and clamp her lips shut to keep the insults inside. Oh well, if wishes were horses, all beggars would ride, her father used to say.
She wriggled around on the mattress, trying to get comfortable with the truth. The vultures would find her again, they always did. They’d demand their pound of flesh, their $183,000. It helped that her cell phone had been cancelled but they’d still find her, and when they did, she’d tell them the truth.
I don’t have a dollar to my name, she’d say, do with me what you will. Maybe that would hold them off. One never heard of debtors going to jail in America; the country seemed to thrive on debt.
“There’s always bankruptcy,” one creditor had advised. “If you filed as a—”
“Are you out of your mind?” she’d interjected. Bankrupt? If her brother ever heard of it, if family friends back home ever knew!
Acid spurted into the woman’s throat and she swallowed hard once, twice, pushing down the inevitable truth, threatening since that first interview with the nephew. One day, one day not too far in the future, the old lady was going to die—and then where would she be? She’d be homeless, that’s where, her Social Security check unable to cover a cheap apartment in the suburbs. Bankruptcy wouldn’t matter. All her suits would have to go to a consignment shop, her jewelry to a pawnbroker, and her books to a secondhand bookstore. There’d be nothing left of her. Nothing.
Her heart pounded with the image of her hand searching the treasure trove of medication in the old lady’s room, pushing a bottle of sleeping tablets deep into her Aigner boots. Just in case.
“God help me,” she whispered to the ceiling, more intention than actual prayer. I will survive. I will not end up in the gutter. I am strong.
She took a deep, shaky breath to calm herself. Yes, she’d imagine instead the family’s beach house in Ocho Rios, where she’d spent all her summers growing up. She could hear the waves rolling in and out, feel the sand under her bare feet and the sun hot on her arms. Her brother was calling her from the water. Her parents and their friends were sitting in lounge chairs on the veranda, chatting and laughing. A maid was handing them drinks. She was warm and safe.
I’m still warm and safe, she reminded herself, taking another breath. I’m living in Virginia-Highlands, and I have a roof over my head and food in the kitchen.
She rolled onto her side, shrugging off the threatening shroud with one last intention-prayer. Sleep came in fits and starts, the dreams tiring. Toward morning she found herself in the maze at Hope Gardens in Kingston and she was little again, running between the box hedges, trying to find a way out.
She was still asleep when a voice pierced through her fog—a shrill, ghostly voice—
“Girl!” the voice called again, more insistent now.
The immigrant’s eyes popped open. She struggled to sit up in the purple gloom, the nylon bedspread sliding to one side.
“Yes ma’am,” she heard herself answer—the truth at last.
PART II
Kin Folks & Skin Folks
Selah
by Anthony Grooms
Inman Park
I can hear sounds I’ve never heard before. The creaking of the floorboards, the footsteps on the stairs, the aching grind of the door hinge—these are common music in this century-old house. The sudden ping of acorns striking the roof, the groan of the giant water oaks and the fluttering shadows they cast from the streetlight playing through the rooms, the scramble of the roof rats in the attic, the possum’s hissing growl as she makes her midnight track—these noises I delight in; the more vigorous, the greater my delight. But it is the voice. The sweet, babbling voice of the child that gives me all the more pleasure. What is she saying? Nevermore or Evermore? You don’t hear it?—yes, you hear it too. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, you and I shall hear it. Evermore! Her little voice gives all the more certainty that I am the instrument of the Most High and the vengeances I exact are pure and justified. Selah.
Was it only a week ago? Six? No. Seven days. Perhaps only five, the first cool evening of autumn after the long, too long, Indian summer. I am a gentle man by all accounts, and so when I stepped out of the front of the house and saw a pair of pine beetles crouching to spring across the threshold, I stomped my feet, rather than crushing them, and sent them scurrying into the beehive of dried leaves that had accumulated on the porch. I was gleeful in spite of the dull, dark, damp, and soundless day. The low-hanging clouds seemed to lift rather than oppress my spirits. I felt the kind of giddiness one gets from a toke—just a toke, mind you—of weed, as that’s all I manage these days. Skipping over the rotten plank on the steps, and through the iron gate—just the gate, the fence having long rusted away—and into Druid Street, named for the oaks which tunnel over it; the street’s name has nothing to do with priests!—I heard a squirrel bark. I recall that barking and the scratching the rodent made as it ran around eave
s of the turret with its one vacant eye-like window. One would think a witch lives there, but no, it is only a nest to rodents. Night and day, I’ve heard their kits peeping. My philosophy is to live and let live, so a squirrel in the attic is nothing to me. I do not fight against nature. But people: that’s a different story. Though I should say, not all people.
Forty, fifty years ago, my neighbors were wonderful people. Just like me. It was when the neighborhood was in decline—decline!—according to the tour guides who glide through on their Segways—simply robotics—simple robots! Declined! they say, from its Gilded Age glory to a hippieville—the grand Greek revivals and Queen Annes given over to tenements and flophouses—and to hippies—they say. Now, it has been rescued. Rescued! This is the language they use. On the brochures. On the websites. The gentrifiers! I’ve heard them cluck. Cluck. Cluck. At my house. It needs painting, they say. The windows need repair. It could be lovely, if only . . . Ha! Remodelers. Relandscapers. New Yorkers and Californians! Saws and leaf blowers all day long. And their self-congratulatory tour of homes and festivals. So-called arts festivals—T-shirts and earrings! What do they know of art? They’ve Home Depot-ed everything—everything except the sidewalks! The hundred-year-old tiles, beautifully buckled by water oak roots, cracked, crushed, missing. That’s art! May they break their damn ankles on it. Selah.
But that day, nothing bothered me. I strode up Euclid Avenue, past the colorful Queen Annes and Craftsman bungalows, reveling in the change of season. The cool air. The billow of storm clouds glowing in sunset. Bats, like phantoms, looping through the sky and the barn owl’s who-whooing. I passed the woods at Springvale Park, where the owls live and where the Wiccans still hold their lunar rites among the silver-barked beeches. On a spur of the moment, I decided to go to the Porter. I liked sitting in the very back of the narrow dungeon of a club and drinking an ale. Perhaps I’d even eat a brat and sauerkraut.