Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  Her father! It explained so much, like why Mama never wanted to talk about him. And dead now. The last of Blanche’s barely acknowledged hope of someday knowing him sifted from her heart like ashes blown from a hearth, leaving a fine dusting of grief behind. He was still her father. And I look like him. What did Mama think when she looked out at me, her child, and saw the man who’d scared and beaten her? Did Mama worry that, looking so much like him, I’d be like him? Grow up pulling the wings off butterflies and bullying little kids? Is that why Mama was always on me about getting in fights and being a tomboy, about being too rough and mannish for my own good?

  But why hadn’t Mama ever told them? No, not them, her. Blanche was positive her sister, Rosalie, had known. Rosalie and Mama had been closer than flesh and bone. And Rosalie never told me, either. She felt a twinge of that old left-out feeling she’d had as a child when she’d come upon Mama and Rosalie huddled together, their heads almost touching, as they worked over a piece of sewing or put together a pie. The shape of their heads and their smiles were so much alike that Rosalie seemed to be a miniature of their mother. Blanche suddenly remembered playing a game with Rosalie in which they made a tent with the blankets on their bed and sang songs inside it, their voices bouncing off the blankets and doubling in strength. Was that to keep out the sound of blows, of her mother begging for mercy? And had Rosalie gathered her up and taken her outside to wait out their father’s storms the way the older girls across the street now did for their younger sister?

  “Oh, Mama!” she shouted. “Damn both of y’all!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  REPORTING AND BONDING

  Blanche went out on her stoop the next morning to wait for Ardell to pick her up. She looked down the street toward the house where Doretha, Murlee, and Lucinda lived. All was quiet, no one in sight. Their father’s car was parked out front, though, so who knew how long this sense of peace would last. Were the girls huddled together inside, holding their breaths, tiptoeing around the house to avoid waking the monster? Blanche was both sorry and glad to be getting off the street for the rest of the day. She’d have liked to stay around to offer cookies and shelter to the girls if something jumped off over there. At the same time, she was relieved to leave. She felt the girls drawing her into a place she didn’t want to go and, as an outsider, didn’t belong. The pull was only made stronger by knowing what her father had done to her mother. She began telling Ardell about him the minute she was in the car.

  “Oh, sugar, I’m so sorry.” Ardell reached over and held Blanche’s hand. “I always thought one day you might go looking for your daddy. Now to find out he…Poor Miz Cora. Who’d have thought she…”

  “Yeah. That’s just the problem I been having. It’s like she’s a different person from…”

  “Well, sure,” Ardell interrupted. “You still thinking about your mother. It was Cora White got beat up by her man—and would have whether she was your mother or not.”

  Leave it to Ardell. Of course. Wasn’t that what she’d been thinking when Mama told her? “You’re absolutely right! All these years I been wondering who Cora really is, what I was looking for was a woman who is as big, bad, and strong as my mama. There ain’t no such woman.”

  “That’s right,” Ardell said. “Nobody’s as big and bad as your mama. Miz Cora’s just a woman like any other—making mistakes, being scared, moving on anyway. Just like the rest of us.”

  Blanche made a mental note to call her mother later. Just to check.

  Clarice was waiting outside Ardell’s house when Blanche and Ardell drove up. The three of them were going to prep for a cocktail party—making finger food, slicing cheese, and so forth. Now Clarice was shifting from left foot to right and wearing a look that changed her usually pleasant face to something painful to see.

  “You better get that door open before Clarice pees all over your pavement,” Blanche told Ardell.

  Once Clarice had emptied her bladder, she was full of talk, and had already started before she was fully in earshot: “…dead, Mr. Henry say.” Ardell and Blanche were washing their hands at the kitchen sink as Clarice continued talking. “…and him not a week out of jail!”

  Blanche spun around, spraying soapsuds across Ardell’s spotless floor. “Dead?! Bobby Larsen? When? How?”

  “Mr. Henry say last night. Car accident. Truck, really. Old piece of pickup truck come apart right under him, Mr. Henry say. Out there on Sumter Road, where that nasty curve is.”

  “Whole lotta people had accidents out there on that road,” Ardell said. “Five or six of ’em been killed. They need to really do something about it.”

  “They keep sayin’ they going to, but…” Clarice shrugged.

  Blanche dried her hands and went to the phone. She asked Information for the number of the cleaners where Daisy worked, then called the number and asked for Daisy.

  “She’s not working today,” a man told her in a voice edged with irritation.

  “Well, my missus said I should talk directly to her, ’cause she was real helpful,” Blanche told him.

  “She’s supposed to be sick,” the man said, his voice switching from irritated to disbelieving.

  “Well, my missus don’t want me to talk to nobody else, she say…”

  “Hold on a second.” The man left the phone, then returned and gave Blanche Daisy’s number.

  Blanche thanked him and called Daisy. “May I speak with Daisy, please?”

  “This is Daisy,” she said in a voice flat as a cast-iron skillet.

  “Hey, Daisy, it’s Blanche White. I heard about Bobby. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. I know you was real fond of him.”

  Daisy burst into muffled sobs, as though she were trying to keep her voice down even if she couldn’t stop crying.

  “Ah, honey, I’m real sorry.” Blanche hadn’t realized that Daisy’s crush on Bobby was so serious. “I know you must feel…”

  “Don’t nobody know, not even my papa. Only me, only me,” Daisy said between sobs.

  Blanch hesitated. Her call had been made out of concern not for Daisy but for the information Bobby had had that she hoped would nail Palmer. Just because there was no more Bobby didn’t mean there was no evidence, and Daisy was her only road to it. But she was reluctant to tread on the girl’s grief.

  “Look, when you coming back to work? I’ll come by and see you. Or maybe we could meet at that place where we had a Coke?”

  “I’ll be in tomorrow,” Daisy said in a whisper. “I’ll meet you at twelve. I gotta hang up…Comin’, Pa,” Blanche heard Daisy call out before the line went dead.

  “What’s that all about?” Ardell wanted to know. Clarice seconded the question with her eyes.

  “I told y’all about Daisy.” Blanche repeated what she’d already told them.

  Ardell looked as though she might have another question, but Clarice spoke instead.

  “Oh yeah,” Clarice said. “Daisy the one got a crush on that Bobby. Mr. Henry say…”

  Ardell didn’t let her finish. “Girl! If I had a nickel for every time you said ‘Mr. Henry,’ I could retire to a life of luxury. What’s the matter? You think you gonna forget the man’s name?”

  Clarice looked puzzled for a few seconds, then: “No, I ain’t scared I’ll forgit it. I just like to say it.” Clarice’s smile was sweet and secretive.

  “And what makes him worth all that?” Ardell asked.

  Clarice didn’t hesitate for a second. “My feet git real tired from standin’ mosta the time. Mr. Henry, he rub ’em every night ’fore we go to bed. With sweet oil.” Clarice lowered her eyes and giggled. “Mr. Henry say I’m pretty. I know it ain’t true,” she added as though wanting to say it before Ardell could. “But that don’t matter, do it?” She looked from Ardell to Blanche. Neither of her listeners disagreed. Blanche noticed the comfortable, sure way Clarice took up her space.


  Clarice turned toward the sink, then looked over her shoulder at Ardell and Blanche. “Don’t never have to ask Mr. Henry to put the toilet seat down neither.” She turned on the tap and washed her hands.

  “Humm. You right,” Ardell told her. “Man deserves to be called Mr. Henry. I’m gonna call him Mr. Henry myself!”

  “I ain’t tryin’ to say he perfect, but…” Clarice hesitated as though she couldn’t think how to say what she wanted. Finally, she shrugged. “He try to be good,” she said as though that said everything, and turned back to the sink.

  Blanche looked at Ardell, sure that they were both thinking about their last Thelvin conversation.

  “Excuse me.”

  Blanche went back to the phone. She cleared her throat when Thelvin’s machine came on, then said: “It’s me, Blanche. I don’t know the answers to your questions yet, but I’m thinking about them. What are you thinking about?”

  Blanche decided to stop by her mother’s instead of calling. Sauda answered the door and gave her a guilty look.

  “You ain’t come about the job have you, Cousin?”

  Damn! She’d completely forgotten to talk to Ardell about a job for Sauda. ’Cause I didn’t want to deal with it, she chided herself.

  “I’m sorry,” Sauda said. “I should have let you know I got a placement at the school. In the library”—a word she made sound like “lie-Brie.”

  Blanche relaxed. “I’m glad. ’Cause I forgot to deal with it,” she said, being careful to tell the truth. She couldn’t afford cheap power trips, they always somehow brought her down before long.

  “Your mama gone out,” Sauda told her.

  “Well, I guess I’ll get on home, then. You take care, Sauda, and tell Mama I stopped by.” Blanche turned to leave.

  “You want a cool drink? I mean, I got no business asking you, it’s your mama’s house, and I…” Sauda looked away from Blanche. “I don’t know nobody here, you see. Except you and Auntie Cora, and…”

  She’s lonely, too, Blanche thought. Just like Mama. Both of them here together.

  “I could use a glass of water, if you don’t mind.” She turned and headed into the house.

  “So they got other black students over there at the art school?”

  “One or two.” Sauda shot Blanche a look. “Stuck-up type. Speak to me once, long enough to find out I ain’t Michael Manley’s niece and that’s the end.”

  “I’d have thought they’d take you up. Being foreign and everything.”

  “Some of the whites do. Want to talk to me about reggae. I don’t know a ting ’bout reggae, and that a fact. They think I’m stuck up.”

  “You getting it from both ends, girl. That’s too bad.”

  Sauda shrugged. “I didn’t think was gonna be no bed a roses. I used to sell my small pieces on the beach, wood carvings, small stone pieces, things like that, you know. I met lots of Americans. Blind as bats, most of them. Only looking at the world for how it is for them, not for other people, but…” Sauda shook off whatever she was going to say, and went another way. “Auntie Cora say you and Miss Ardell been friends from girls.”

  “Yeah, honey. We got history, me and Ardell.”

  “I got me a friend like that. She live in London. Trying to make it as a singer.”

  In the silence that followed, Blanche felt the tug on the cord that connected her to Ardell and what that connection had meant in their lives. She realized that she and Ardell hadn’t spent any real fun time together since she’d been back in Farleigh. They’d been in each other’s company a lot, but mostly on gigs or getting ready for gigs, where their attention was taken up with work. She decided to make a date with Ardell just to hang out.

  “Ardell’s got a cousin about your age, I think. I’ll ask her to give you a call, show you around.”

  Sauda looked as though Blanche had just saved her life. “I appreciate that, Cousin.”

  Blanche rose to leave.

  “Wait. I got a bit a something for you. It’s not much, but…”

  Sauda went upstairs and came down again. She handed Blanche something small wrapped in wrinkled tissue paper. Blanche unwrapped a dark gray marble oval the size of a large chicken egg. But it wasn’t smooth. A woman’s face, heavy-featured and haughty, was carved on all sides of it in such a way that as you turned it the expression changed from haughty, to laughing, to tears and a frown. Blanche turned it over and over in her hands, wowed by both its beauty and its cleverness.

  “Girl, you got something goin on here!” She gave Sauda a hug along with her thanks.

  Blanche was dressing for work when Thelvin called. She took a deep, shuddery breath before she picked up the phone.

  “I miss you, Blanche. I can’t stand being on the outs with you,” Thelvin told her before she could speak.

  “Me, too,” she said, aware that she was grinning fit to split her face. “I can’t talk long, I gotta go to work.”

  “Me either. I just come in. I been out my sister’s place, helping my brother-in-law put down a floor. I figured since you and me wasn’t together I might as well…I got to go back out there, so…”

  “What about tomorrow?” Blanche asked him. She felt shaky the minute the words were out of her mouth. She wanted to see him, but it was like a sore tooth: it didn’t hurt as long as she didn’t touch it. Although they still had plenty to work out, she wanted a rest from it for a minute. A little space where everything was all right. “I know!” she said. “It’s time for you to meet Ardell.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  MEETING OF THE BLANCHE FAN CLUB

  As the afternoon moved toward evening, Blanche became more and more tickled by her own nervousness. Anybody’d think Ardell was Mama. No. If it were Mama, she wouldn’t care so much; Ardell’s opinion of Thelvin was second only to Blanche’s own. Don’t expect her to trust him, she warned herself. You know how Ardell is. But, though Ardell wasn’t exactly a cheerleader for maleness, she liked sharp people, quick people, and Thelvin was all that. And gentle, too. Blanche laid down the spatula, mindless of the smear of cream-cheese frosting it made on the table, caught up in remembering his delicate touch as he held her on the dance floor, the way his eyes seemed to light up when he saw her, as though he was both surprised and happy to be with her.

  The carrot cake was ready and so was she when Thelvin came to pick her up. The three of them were going to watch Eve’s Bayou at Ardell’s house. Blanche was bringing dessert.

  Ardell opened the door before they were parked. “Hey, y’all.” She took the cake from Thelvin and carried it to the kitchen.

  “Ardell,” Blanche said when she returned, “this is Thelvin. Thelvin, this is my best friend, Ardell.”

  Ardell put out her hand and Thelvin shook it, but neither of them smiled. Blanche imagined she heard a sound—metal grating on metal like a fast-braking train. Oh shit! She looked from one to the other and could almost see both their backs go up. This was not love at first sight.

  “I got the movie,” Ardell said before Blanche could get a line on what was going on. “Sit down, sit down. Y’all want something to drink?”

  They were quiet during the movie except for a chuckle, a grunt or shrug, a nod of approval. They took an intermission about hallway through so that everyone could go to the bathroom and get fresh drinks. No one had anything to say beyond “More ice?” and “Thank you,” as if they’d silently agreed to keep their minds on the movie. Yet, beneath the quiet calm, Blanche could still hear that grating sound, as though Ardell and Thelvin were rubbing each other the wrong way just by being in the same room. She looked from one to the other and hoped she was imagining things.

  When the movie ended, Thelvin and Ardell both stood and stretched as though it were part of watching the video. Blanche went off to the kitchen to cut the cake.

  “So—what’d you think?” she asked when they all had cake i
n front of them and the coffee was almost done.

  “I think it was…” Ardell and Thelvin said in unison.

  “Ladies first,” Thelvin said.

  Blanche cringed. Ardell gave her a smirky smile.

  “It was the best black movie I’ve seen,” Ardell said.

  Blanche didn’t think it was better than Daughters of the Dust, but she didn’t say so.

  Thelvin stared at Ardell as though she’d just announced she was a serial killer. “How can it be the best black movie you ever seen when the major black man in it is a womanizing…”

  Ardell shrugged. “It’s life. That’s what…”

  “I know you ain’t goin to say that’s what all black men is like?” Thelvin asked. “Just because some men run around on their wives and girlfriends don’t mean…”

  “A helluva lot of them is cheaters, it seems to me,” Ardell snapped. “All you have to do is look at…”

  “That still ain’t all black men,” Thelvin told her. “Anyway, if we doin all that cheatin’, who’re we doin it with? Some black women ain’t no better than…”

  Each time they spoke, Ardell and Thelvin seemed to puff up a little higher and stiffer, like competing bowls of egg whites being whipped to peaks.