I put on my bed jacket and pink slippers and opened the door, leading the way, Ruth behind me. We walked down the steps, through the dining room, right up to the swinging kitchen door, pushed it opened just to peek, and saw Mrs. Pittman cutting biscuits from dough with the rim of the glass, like Mama did. Mrs. Pittman turned around, saw my eyes, and welcomed us into her kitchen.
She sat us down, gave us each a cup of cold milk, two warm biscuits with butter and peach preserves, and said, “Mr. Chapel fancies peaches.”
She was humming a tune I’d heard Sister Goodnight sing, about bringing in the sheaves, and told us to bless our food. I blessed my food, wondering what sheaves were, butter dripping everywhere.
Ruth asked, “How come Mr. Chapel got a little money?”
“Mr. Chapel was the chauffeur for a rich white man,” Mrs. Pittman said. “Then he got rich hisself when he bought up property after the depression for a dollar here, another dollar there. When his first wife died from tuberculosis, every single highfalutin woman from here to New York was on his doorstep, knockin loud for bout two years. He didn’t pay most of em no never mind till he ran into Mrs. Chapel at one of his apartments where she was lookin to rent.” Mrs. Pittman kept talking. “He been a happy man since that October evenin when he came into the house whistlin ‘Honeysuckle Rose.’ Now Mr. Chapel and Mrs. Chapel work together. They call it Chapel and Chapel Real Estate.”
The last word was barely out of her mouth when Mr. Chapel came into the kitchen through the swinging door, asking for coffee with cream. He saw us, smiled, and asked, “How the little ladies doin?”
We replied, “Fine,” and smiled back at Mr. Bill Chapel and then at each other.
He drank his coffee standing up and said good-bye. I went to the window to look after him. He got in his car and drove off.
Ruth asked for some bacon and Mrs. Pittman let her have a piece. She must have read my mind because she gave me a piece too, thick rind and all.
Mrs. Pittman smiled, put the last pan of biscuits in the oven, and started scrambling eggs. She put eggs, fried potatoes, and two slices of bacon on our plates. She gave us more biscuits, poured us some orange juice, and said she was going to fatten us up.
She was still smiling and grinning, grinning and smiling when Mama and Gramma came through the door, nostrils wide open from the smell of food that had filled the house.
Gramma said, “The smell of melted butter on hot biscuits woke us.” She wiped the sleep from her eyes and yawned without covering her mouth, and Mama nudged her. Gramma continued, “I’m gonna need some real strong coffee, two cups, if I gotta put up with Rita under the same roof as me for two weeks.”
“Where’s Olivia?” Mama asked, letting Gramma’s words fly by.
Mrs. Pittman replied quietly like a church whisper, “Mrs. Chapel don’t eat no breakfast since she lost her babies, two in a row.”
We all stopped eating. Mama and Gramma stared into the hiding places of each other’s eyes. Then Mrs. Pittman said, “Doctor said she can’t have no more. Not even to try is what he made Mr. Chapel promise. Stillborn, first a boy, then a girl ... beautiful children ... but none of the Lord’s breath was in em.”
I expected Mama to make me and Ruth leave the room like she usually did when secrets began to be spoken. Maybe because we were eating in someone else’s kitchen, sleeping between someone else’s starched sheets, she let us stay. Silence covered us.
Olivia breezed through the door, wearing lipstick and a smile, and no one said a word. More silence.
Mrs. Pittman, head lowered from telling someone else’s secrets, said only, “Mornin,” poured a cup of coffee, and offered it to Olivia.
That’s when I knew why Olivia’s eyes danced only when she looked into her husband’s eyes. They had swallowed the same sorrow.
I caught her eyes, smiled into them, and said, “Mornin.”
Gramma got up from the table and excused herself from the kitchen, eyes watering, ready to spill over. Mama kept her tears and began talking about the sights we were going to see. Olivia sat down in Gramma’s warmed-up chair, poured some cream into her coffee, then a spoonful of sugar, and sipped. She looked up at Mrs. Pittman and asked for a biscuit, bacon, and two eggs, sunny-side up. Mrs. Pittman looked at Olivia like she was hearing things.
I took one last bite of bacon, excused myself from the table, and took my plate and glass to Mrs. Pittman at the sink. Ruth asked if she could have another biscuit and I went through the swinging door.
The morning lit the house through many windows, and I found my way to the front room and sat on the velvet sofa. I ran my fingers across it. It was smooth and soft. The big window was made of stained glass, yellow, green, red, blue. The glass lamp on the table in front of the window had hanging crystals that caught the sun and covered the wall with shreds of light. It felt like I was in heaven.
I looked down at my pink slippers. When I looked up, Ruth was standing in front of me, biscuit crumbs sitting in the corners of her mouth.
“You need to wipe your mouth,” I told her.
She wiped her mouth with her hands, laughed, and joined me on the sofa. “Why you sittin here?”
“Cuz I want to.”
“Oh.”
I looked around, studying the room, so that I could take the memory home with me.
Then Ruth and I had the same thought at the same time and we found ourselves looking into every corner of that room, peeking in closets, opening and closing drawers quietly like thieves.
There was a bookshelf with what looked like hundreds of books and I looked through some of them. They weren’t library books. I could tell. There were three Bibles and a set of encyclopedias.
Ruth found a tiny bathroom with nothing but a sink and a toilet. She pulled down her underpants and sat on the toilet without closing the door.
“You gotta close the door, Ruth.” It was the same thing she did in Sulphur, leaving the outhouse door open, saying she was afraid she might fall in and get covered with lime. I heard the toilet flush.
“Wash your hands, nasty,” I said.
“You sure can get on my nerves, Leah. You sure can.” Ruth turned on the water in the clean white sink and washed and dried her hands. I would do my business later, upstairs, when no one else was around, like I always did at home, looking through the half-moon cut out in the outhouse door at the sky, blue, gray, or midnight black.
The high-pitched bark of a dog drew us to an open side window. He was a little dog, smaller than a fox, shorthaired, and we heard a lady from the house next door call him “Chili.” She spoke a different language. The words sounded like a melody.
“Chili,” I called softly. The word floated through the air and found him. He stopped barking, sat back on his hind legs, opened his mouth, and howled.
I looked at my pink watch. It was only nine o’clock but it felt like I had been here for a long time, in this house where the dog next door was named Chili.
Ruth and I walked through the hall toward the back of the house and I opened the back door. Flowers of every color filled the yard and I wondered if I had found the Garden of Eden. I took Ruth by the hand and we walked down the brick steps into the yard. I touched a drying white rose and its petals fell to the ground. The door creaked and we looked toward the back porch where Aunt Olivia stood smiling, her hair loose, brushing her shoulders. She looked like a princess in a pink satin robe.
“Enjoying my flowers, I see,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” we said at the same time.
“Call me Aunt Olivia,” she said.
“Yes ma’am, Aunt Olivia.”
She joined us in her garden and told us that the vine that crept along the back wall with red flowers that looked like tissue paper was called a bougainvillea, that the bush with the big yellow flowers was called hibiscus. I wondered if she would test us later to see if we remembered.
I touched the tip of an orange-and-yellow flower. “What’s this?”
“Bird-of-paradise.” She gently bru
shed the hair back from my face and I looked into her eyes. She picked two yellow flowers from the hibiscus bush and tucked one behind my ear and one behind Ruth’s. She told us that there were places on some islands where the women wore flowers in their hair and skirts made of grass.
Ruth smiled and said, “You is a very silly woman, Aunt Olivia ... skirts cain’t be made from grass.”
Aunt Olivia swore it was so as we made our way back into the house. Gramma and Mama were in the kitchen. Ruth and I walked upstairs to our bedroom, yellow flowers in our hair. Mrs. Pittman was making the bed.
“Y’all look bout ready for Hawaii.” Mrs. Pittman fluffed the pillows.
“Where’s Hawaii?” I asked.
“Islands in the Pacific Ocean ... Pearl Harbor ... where the Japanese bombed us during World War Two.”
“It’s not part of the United States of America?” I said.
“No, little ma’am, not yet.” Mrs. Pittman finished making the bed and told us we should get dressed.
Ruth told her, “Leah’s tryin to be a smarty-pants.”
“Nuthin wrong with that,” was her reply. “Nuthin wrong with that.”
We ate lunch in the backyard on furniture that stayed outside. I ate my ham sandwich and crunched my potato chips slowly, washing them down with sips of Coca-Cola from the bottle. I was glad Aunt Olivia and Mama had made up; not only had Aunt Olivia been missing from Mama’s life, but I felt like she’d been missing from mine.
It was the third day of July and the next day we were going to the beach. The only beach I’d ever been to was Lake Ponchartrain, where we rode for hours to swim in the murky water, passing whites-only beaches all along the way.
“Is the beach here for colored?” Ruth asked Aunt Olivia.
The grown-ups looked around the table at one another.
“No, Ruth,” Aunt Olivia replied. “There are no segregated beaches in California.”
“What’s segregated?” Ruth asked.
“When they tell colored where they can or can’t go, to eat, to school, to live, to die,” Aunt Olivia answered.
“Like home, like Sulphur,” I added.
“Like everywhere beneath the Mason-Dixon line,” Aunt Olivia replied.
That was the name of the line Mrs. Redcotton had talked about, the Mason-Dixon line.
“Where’s the Mason-Dixon line?” I asked.
Aunt Olivia answered, “Boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, separating the North from the South. Won’t catch me on the wrong side of that line again.... Won’t ever catch me.”
I was learning about the South, sitting at a table in the North.
The next day Ruth and I approached the blue water of the Pacific Ocean for the first time and I put my foot cautiously in the cool water where white children, men, and women splashed and smiled. I took a deep breath and waded in the water up to my knees, holding Ruth’s hand, looking toward the horizon. Freedom.
Later, as we roasted hot dogs on coat hangers over a fire pit, Ruth said hot dogs looked like what she’d seen once between Nathan Shine’s legs when he ran out of the house butt naked, his wild-eyed mama chasing him with his daddy’s wide belt. I looked at the hot dog, put on some mustard and a little relish, and ate.
I thought about what Micah Shine had said, about not wanting to wind up hanging from a tree. When we got home I was going to tell him that he wouldn’t have to worry about being burned to a crisp in Los Angeles, California, near Hollywood, where colored didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus unless they wanted to.
The fireworks lit the night sky as we sat on a blanket in the sand and roasted marshmallows, brown, sticky, sweet.
The ocean breeze was cool and smelled of salt and seaweed. I turned to look at Mama and Aunt Olivia. They were alike but different, Olivia delicate, Rita sturdy, both quick to smile, quick to laugh.
Music played and I got up to dance under the moon.
Ruth said, “You cain’t dance. It’s what everyone says about you, even Mama ’n Daddy.”
“Can too.” I clapped my hands, keeping time, my head bobbing. Mama and Aunt Olivia, Gramma, and Uncle Bill looked at me and smiled. “See,” I said.
“See what?” Ruth rolled her eyes.
I snapped my fingers, “See me dance.” I was free, at that moment, in that place.
That night, as I washed the sand and salt from my body in a tub filled with bubbles, thoughts made circles in my mind. Colored go to the back door. No colored allowed. Whites only. Nigger. Go to the back of the bus. Nigger. In Sulphur, it was the way we lived, the way it was.
The next day Mama and I sat in the backyard on the brick steps, under the shade of a tree. It was hot. She took my hand in hers and a summer breeze cooled us.
“Why we gotta go back? I like it here.” I was looking for answers.
“Daddy ... our little house.” Her answers sounded like questions.
“Daddy would come, once we tell him bout it. He could get a job here. Daddy would wanna come. I know he would. Then he could buy us a big house and drive a fine car just like he’s always talkin bout.” She dropped my hand.
“It’s what we got.... It’s what we got, Leah.” Nothing else was said.
All I could wonder was why any colored man or woman would ever go back to the South, below the Mason-Dixon line, after knowing what freedom felt like.
We ate lunch and drove to a movie theater where we saw Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire.
Driving downtown to Chinatown, Mama stared from the window in silence as Gramma and Olivia, Ruth and I chirped and chattered about diamonds being a girl’s best friend.
“Sure wish I had some diamonds to call my best friend. A diamond necklace might keep me good company.” Gramma looked over at Olivia and smiled.
I said, “Diamonds cain’t be your best friend.”
“And why is that, Leah Jean?” Gramma asked.
“Cuz they cain’t listen to your secrets.”
Aunt Olivia looked at the diamond ring on her finger and said, “You’re right about that, Leah.”
Ruth said, “Leah’s my best friend ... and my sister. I listen to all her secrets.”
Olivia parked the car and looked over at Mama, and smiles came to their lips.
In the restaurant, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with the two wooden sticks they gave us with our food.
“They’re chopsticks,” Aunt Olivia said. She handled them like an expert, picking up rice that was covered with a salty brown liquid called soy sauce.
Mama, Ruth, and I tried but failed, and finally asked for forks. Gramma looked at the shrimp fried rice, shook her head, and jabbed a shrimp with the tip of the stick. Carefully she brought it to her mouth. Then she asked for a fork too. I broke open my fortune cookie. It said, “You will always have good luck and overcome many hardships.” Ruth’s said, “You will meet a tall, dark stranger.” I tucked mine into my sock and Ruth gave hers to Mama to keep in her pocketbook. The people who served us had dark narrow eyes and pin-straight black hair. I knew where they were from. China was in Asia.
Someday, I thought, I will go there. Someday.
Three days later, with tears in our eyes, we were back on the train, bound for New Orleans, the red rose box in my lap.
Seven
Seems like as soon as we finished waving good-bye to Aunt Olivia and Uncle Bill Chapel, we were waving hello to Daddy and Elijah. They were waiting inside the train station with their hats on, grinning. I was so happy to see them.
Ruth and I got in the back of Elijah’s truck with Daddy, curled up beside him like two snakes under a river rock, and fell asleep.
When I woke, I was in my bed, Ruth tucked in at the foot, Daddy standing over me. I thought I was dreaming. Being close to him almost made me forget about California and chopsticks.
He said, “Seems like your mama dun gone off to Hollywood and got a little fulla herself.”
I said, “No, Mama isn’t the only one, we’s all a little fulla ourse
lves.”
Daddy said with half a smile, “Long as y’all know how to come back down to earth, I ain’t bout to worry.”
I replied, “Daddy, ain’t isn’t no real word. That’s what Mrs. Redcotton says.”
Daddy smiled a big smile, a funny look in his eyes, and said, “Well, you tell Mrs. Redcotton that Willie Hopper said thank you very much for educatin my children to speak proper English.” He paused. “I can see now that Leah’s on her way to better things.”
Ruth added, “Me too.”
“Daddy, could we move to California? It’s real pretty and they don’t have no Whites Only signs and no hurricanes neither. Least that’s what Uncle Bill Chapel said.” I was trying to convince him.
“Got earthquakes though, plenty of those.” Daddy caressed the top of my head.
“What’s a earthquake?” Ruth asked.
“The earth begins to shake and rumble, opens up, swallows up people, cows, horses, whole towns sometimes, then the earth closes back up till the next time ... never no warning.” Daddy was wearing a straight face but part of me thought that he was stretching the truth.
“Is that true, Daddy, or just another tall tale?” I was getting sleepy.
“Part truth, part tale. You gotta decide what is what, Leah. Good night, pretty little gals.”
He tucked us in again and we drifted toward sleep, listening to Mama and Daddy giggle in the next room like they always did when he came home.
July was hot, smelling like too much rain, feeling like a hurricane, thunder in the distance. Lightning struck and lit the sky.
Sunday mass. We said good morning to Sunday and saw Micah and Nathan Shine, their straight-haired, half-Indian mama with them in the pew ahead of us. Ruth and I thought at the same time about hot dogs and started laughing. Daddy looked at us once. Once was enough and we quieted, listening to Father Murphy. The smell of incense filled the church. Candles glowed. The statue of Christ on the cross loomed above us. The altar boys stood beside the priest. Father Murphy’s bug eyes reminded me of a grasshopper. When the time came for communion, I didn’t go, only because of what I thought about Nathan Shine and hot dogs. Ruth went anyway. Daddy looked back at me as he made his way to the front of the church. I hung my head.
The Red Rose Box Page 4