House of Rougeaux

by Jenny Jaeckel

  Blessedly, up to now, Virginia’s illness has progressed only very slowly. Her mother’s “spells” always hold a special dread for Rosalie, a little line of terror that seems to drop from the top of her head down into the pit of her stomach, every time she comes home from school and finds her mother in bed. Like after last Thanksgiving. Rosalie had found her mother in bed with a fever and dialed up Loretta, who came as soon as she was able, bringing with her a small package from the drugstore. Rosalie wanted to stay home from school the next days but her parents wouldn’t allow it, reassuring her that this was nothing serious or new, and that Aunt Violet would be coming over. Still, each time her mother falls ill, Rosalie harbors the secret fear that her mother, in her absence, will somehow slip away.

  * * *

  Rosalie’s junior year in high school winds up filled with parties and dances and awards for outstanding achievement. She receives a special certificate for her work on the school paper, and even wins a prize at a dance for her rendition of the Nitty Gritty. Anyone can do the twist, you know, but not everyone can pull off the Nitty Gritty. There’s a girl’s prize and a boy’s prize, and Rosalie takes home a smart, pink, faux leather handbag. The boy’s prize goes to Chester Washington, a graduating senior, who receives a shiny brown wallet on a chain. Ches dances the next song swinging his new wallet around like a cowboy, making the boys laugh and the girls swoon, just like he always does.

  The last day of classes is a Wednesday and, as her mother has a doctor’s appointment the next day, Rosalie goes along. Rosalie has the new handbag with her, which is already accumulating the essentials: coin purse, compact, a little jar of Vaseline and a miniature package of Kleenex, comb, hairpins, chewing gum, nail file, nail varnish, bus schedule and transfer, subway tokens, address book, two ballpoint pens. She is just locating her nail file when she overhears Dr. Leventhal’s red-headed secretary, Miss Carey, on the phone talking about the girl who comes in to help in the office twice a week. “Had to leave without notice,” she says, “in case you know of anyone.” Miss Carey has had to come in today, instead of visiting her mother out in Cherry Hill as she usually does.

  Rosalie completed her secretarial course a few weeks ago and has a perfect “To Whom it May Concern” letter of introduction on her bureau at home. The next day, without telling anybody, Rosalie takes the bus back up Broad Street to the doctor’s office. She has the letter folded in an envelope in her handbag, and has on her best skirt and jacket set. Miss Carey is there in the office as before, and looks up at her when she comes in and walks up to the front desk.

  Rosalie breaks out in that prickly sweat under her brassiere that always comes over her in debate club matches, or if she needs help from a white salesclerk.

  “Ma’am, I’d like to help out in the office,” she says, “just until you can find someone else.” She hands Miss Carey the letter. The chilly silence that follows is broken by the appearance of the doctor, exiting the examination room behind an elderly patient. He looks curiously at Rosalie.

  “Hello Miss Hubbard,” he says. Sometimes being formal is his way of being friendly. “Your mother is alright, isn’t she?”

  Rosalie says, “Yes sir,” and explains why she’s come today, that she’s done a secretarial course and has brought her letter of introduction that describes all of her skills, and her high marks besides.

  Miss Carey turns her bewildered and mascaraed blue eyes on the doctor and says, “Oh I don’t think….” But he plucks the letter from her hands and looks it over.

  “Well this is splendid,” he says, “this will be just fine!”

  Rosalie can’t quite believe her ears and breathlessly answers “Yes sir,” again when he asks if she has time to stay for an hour or two right now.

  He says Miss Carey can show her how they run things and she can start tomorrow morning. “I know you are anxious to see your mother,” he says, smiling at Miss Carey. Rosalie is elated. She has landed her first job.

  * * *

  By early July, Rosalie has been on the job three weeks, Thursdays and Fridays. The other days she babysits, helps her mother, sees friends, and shuttles large bags of books to and from the library. One afternoon she comes up the street to her door just as the postman is hopping down off the stoop. She lets herself in and bends to pick up the letters and circulars, calling out to her mother in the kitchen. Virginia is sorting the laundry she has just pulled in off the line. Rosalie sees there’s a letter from her mother’s cousin Martine on top of the stack. Momma will be happy about that.

  Martine is Virginia’s older cousin, on her father’s side, who lives up in Montreal. In Canada. Martine and Virginia struck up a correspondence some years before Rosalie was born, after Papa Dax passed on and Virginia wrote to notify the family. Martine’s reply, expressing condolences and describing her childhood memories of Dax as a young man, touched Virginia with its tenderness and eloquence. Much later, when Virginia’s letter carried the awful news about Azalea, Martine wrote back entreating her to “write her heart” any time she was able, because Martine herself had lost a child, her boy Gus when he was only seven, and she knew. It helped Virginia to have someone outside the immediate family to confide in, still does. Some worries or pains are just too close.

  Rosalie leaves the mail and her bag on the table and takes the milk bottle from the Frigidaire. She’s getting a glass from the cupboard when she hears her mother say, “Oh, Lord.” Virginia is standing at the table looking at an envelope with her reading glasses on. She wears them on a chain like a librarian so they are always handy. Her hands are shaking. It’s from the Draft Board, addressed to Lionel Hubbard, Junior. Rosalie feels the blood drain from her head.

  “What’s it say?”

  They sit down at the table. Virginia tears open the envelope and reads the letter over. There’s not much to it. Junior is to report to the Draft Board office for a medical examination on August first. Failing to do so is punishable by law. Rosalie’s mind races. Hasn’t she heard that sometimes boys are found unfit for the army because they limp, or because they have a bad ear or something? What about Junior’s eyes? He can see things just fine up close, but without his glasses anything past an arm’s length is a complete blur. Surely a pair of glasses would be the easiest thing to lose in a jungle war zone; they can’t have soldiers running around blind as bats. This is the topic of the evening, of course, once the men return home from work. Junior tries to make light of it. “They can’t take me,” he says, giving Momma a squeeze. “I’m Mr. Magoo!” But late in the night, stumbling to the bathroom after a few fitful hours of sleep, Rosalie passes by Junior’s room and sees the glow under the door that means his reading lamp is still on. She thinks about knocking, but doesn’t.

  * * *

  “How are you this morning, Rosalie?” asks Dr. Leventhal, looking over the roster of today’s patients.

  “My brother is being drafted,” says Rosalie, without preamble. She can’t help it.

  The doctor looks up from the roster and stares at her a long moment.

  “Has he been for the physical yet?”

  “No sir, not yet.”

  “Doesn’t he wear glasses?”

  “Yes sir, he does,” she says, a spark of hope rising in her chest. “We’re thinking maybe they won’t take him on account of that.”

  “Why don’t you bring him in, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Junior comes in at the end of that same day. After the examination the doctor has Rosalie take a letter, which she then types up on the office stationery that the doctor signs with his gold-tipped fountain pen.

  It would not behoove the Armed Forces to induct this young man… the letter reads.

  Behoove, thinks Rosalie on the bus home with Junior. She has a habit of collecting words and this one’s a keeper.

  But the letter from Dr. Leventhal doesn’t work. Junior tells it all later on.

  The white officer in charge scoffs at Dr. Leventhal’s letter, when Junior hands it to him.


  “This isn’t grammar school,” he says, “this is the United States Army.” He looks down at the form Junior has filled out, and the line where it states his occupation.

  “Delivery boy,” says the officer. “Drive a truck, do you?” Junior says yes. “Then you can see just fine.”

  He checks the final box on the physical record where it says “Fit for Service” and stamps it with an induction date. September 19th. Less than two months away.

  Virginia’s next letter to her cousin Martine has a desperate tone. She’s praying to God every day and doesn’t know what to do. Two weeks later on a Tuesday night the telephone rings, an international call from Montreal. This is the first time Virginia has heard her cousin’s voice, unfamiliar over the crackling line, in nearly forty years.

  It says, “Bring him here.”

  * * *

  The next Sunday, after dinner, a family discussion ensues.

  Lionel Senior still respects the late President Kennedy and remembers his famous “Ask Not” speech. He has questions about loyalty and duty, service and sacrifice, though not for a second does he take lightly the fate of his own son. Uncle Edwin, Aunt Violet’s husband, weighs in, citing the Second World War, and the Black battalions that served with honor against Hitler.

  “That may be so,” allows Charlie, Loretta’s beau, “but this is different. This is the white man’s war. There ain’t no Hitler over there. The Black man is the white man’s cannon fodder.” Dr. King has spoken out against the war in Asia, and Brother Malcolm too. Charlie has never followed the Nation of Islam, but he still refers to the now ex-minister in this way. Indeed, Black boys are being drafted at twice the rate of whites, and are suffering double the casualties of white soldiers. That’s cannon fodder, if ever there was such a thing.

  The women are less concerned with the politics. “If he goes up to Canada,” says Aunt Violet, “he may never be able to come back.”

  Everyone stays quiet after that. The meeting, for tonight at least, is adjourned.

  * * *

  The last Friday in August, Rosalie finishes up at the doctor’s office and decides to drop by her sister’s apartment before going home. It’s five o’clock and Loretta will be back from the switchboard at the Bell Telephone building. Fridays she starts early, seven a.m. When Rosalie arrives Loretta is out of her work clothes and in her slip and dressing gown, the Japanese silk one printed with purple grape leaves. Her long, hot-combed hair is up in a French twist, and she is ironing a shiny silver party dress.

  It’s obvious, notes Rosalie with a measure of envy, that Loretta has inherited the elegance of their mother and their aunt. In their youth Virginia and Violet Rougeaux were both beautiful, and also gifted in the art of enhancing that beauty. What is it about those two? folks used to say. Edwin Montgomery and Lionel Hubbard had come out on top of a large pile of eager suitors, winning their engagements each in his own way. In Edwin’s case with gentle kisses, and in Lionel’s, a pair of sizzling eyes.

  “Where’s Charlie taking you tonight?” says Rosalie from the sofa.

  “Up to the City,” says Loretta, turning the dress over to iron the other side. By “City” she means New York City, which means Harlem. She doesn’t mind shaking it once in a while at a nice nightclub.

  The heat of the afternoon, the smell of Loretta’s perfume, the hiss of the iron and the end of the activity of a busy week soon conspire to make Rosalie’s eyelids droop. Before she knows it she’s waking up to the sound of the telephone ringing, and the sun is slanting in at a much lower angle. She hears Loretta answer in the next room.

  “Momma, Momma, she’s right here. She’s with me, she’s fine. Came right after work.”

  Rosalie staggers up and over toward the bedroom where Loretta has the phone in one hand and the receiver to her ear. She glances at Rosalie and gives a gesture with her free fingers meaning not to worry. “Okay,” she says, “okay, we will. Charlie’s coming any minute now. We’ll see you soon.”

  “All hell’s breaking loose up on Columbia Avenue,” she says. Just last month race riots raged over Harlem and Rochester, and everyone knew it could happen in North Philadelphia too. Rosalie had read a recent newspaper editorial that called North Philadelphia a “tinderbox,” describing the heavily grieved black community as at a near breaking point with the white police force.

  “Is it a riot?” whispers Rosalie.

  “Maybe,” says Loretta. “As soon as Charlie gets here we’re taking you home. Momma was scared to death you were still up at Dr. Leventhal’s.” The Broad Street office is only a few blocks from the Columbia intersection.

  * * *

  They haven’t even knocked before Virginia flings open the door and drags them all inside. She bolts the door behind them and embraces them savagely. Loretta sees their father coming up behind them from the kitchen.

  “Where’s Junior?” she says.

  “On his way,” says Lionel Senior, doing his best to calm the situation with his steady voice. “He just called over here from Freihofers.”

  “You all heard anything else?” says Charlie. Lionel gestures for him to follow, he’s got the transistor radio on in the kitchen and wants to leave the women alone for a spell. Loretta leads her mother to the sofa and sits her down. Virginia is trembling. Something wild has sprung up in her eyes.

  “I’m taking Junior up to Montreal,” she says, “soon as I can.” Lord knows she can’t afford to lose another child.

  * * *

  Unhinged. That is the way the world feels to Rosalie during the days of rioting. In fact, ever since the draft letter she has felt this way. Now smoke spills over the sky and turns the sun a bloody red. Church leaders, her father among them, remain in close conference and go out in teams trying to quell the chaos. Her mother forbids the children from going out at all, except to Aunt Violet’s, which is only four doors down. Nelie is there with the baby as their apartment is nearer to the fray. Nelie, who wraps an arm around Rosalie’s shoulders, reassures her they’ll get through.

  By Monday it’s all over. On Wednesday evening Rosalie calls Dr. Leventhal on the telephone to ask if the office is open that week. It is, but the doctor certainly understands if she would rather not come in. The shopfront windows downstairs are broken, but nothing was disturbed in the offices upstairs. Rosalie has her parents’ permission to go, as they feel sure the fury has been spent. Folks need to see the doctor and it’s time to pick up the pieces. This will be her last two days at the office. School starts up again next week and Rosalie will be a senior. All of it is hard to believe.

  What she isn’t telling anyone outside the family is that she is about to accompany her mother and brother on a journey to Canada, just after classes begin. It won’t do for Momma, what with her pains, to travel back alone. Loretta will look after Daddy, just to put their mother at ease. He could survive if he had to though, on steak sandwiches and coffee and the Philadelphia Tribune.

  Last Friday night when they were all assembled at the table Momma declared her intentions. Daddy, as a formality, reminded them of the other considerations, and everyone else stayed quiet, including Junior. Finally Lionel Senior turned toward Junior, and said, “What do you have to say, Son?” This was his life after all, and he was a man now.

  Junior looked around the table, then down at his hands, and said with soft-spoken finality: “I don’t want to kill nobody.”

  * * *

  Rosalie hovers anxiously at her bureau, opening one drawer and then another, not knowing what to pack. Half an hour goes by and all she has in her suitcase is a nightgown and a hairbrush. If anyone on the train asks, they are headed to Montreal for a cousin’s wedding. Junior will bring only a few items of clothing, a photograph of the family, his father’s silver wrist watch, and what cash they can get together. The train fare is terribly expensive. Rosalie can get what school assignments she’s missed upon her return, as she’ll be out of school a week or so. No one is too worried about that for a change.

  It’s
four a.m. when they board the train at Pennsylvania Station on 30th Street, and they catch the sunrise over New York City. Rosalie and her mother do, anyway. Junior is asleep. Up through the Hudson River Valley, they spend the long hours playing pinochle, napping, walking up and down the aisles, gazing at the passing landscape and cracking sunflower seeds. Momma busies herself with her knitting bag, making a muffler and stocking cap for Junior out of balls of soft, gray wool. The Montreal winters are so bitter. Rosalie reads the new Steinbeck memoir, recommended by her English teacher. Junior has a copy of You Only Live Twice. George Stewart gave it to him the night before they left, and has written on the inside cover:

  Junior, you candyass. As soon as my number comes up I’m heading up there too. I’m going to steal your girlfriend, so make sure she’s pretty. I’ll miss you a lot. GS.

  A few times Rosalie takes out the French textbook she was just issued at school. French class suddenly seems a lot more relevant, in light of recent events. Her mother has explained that their family in Montreal belongs to a largely English-speaking community, but that the city and province speak mostly French. She tries out a number of phrases, tries to interest Junior. He humors her with a few bonjours and mercis, but then drifts purposefully away.

  Later on they put in another chapter of their long-standing critique of the songs of the day. For Junior, musicians and their music fall generally into three categories: cool, Mack Daddy, and fruity. Little Richard, The Beatles, and The Kinks are cool. The Four Seasons and The Beach Boys are fruity. Coltrane is Mack Daddy. Rosalie agrees on what’s cool, and gets Junior to admit he likes “Dancing in the Street.” That Martha can sing. Junior calls her choice, as he does all three Ronettes and all four Crystals, which pretty much means he’d marry them all. If they’d have him.