“First of all, you’ve got to see his car, a black 1937 Chevrolet. Just sitting inside it would have been plenty to me, but then he took me up to his house and introduced me to all his family, and friends too, called me his lady out there in front of everyone. Then we drove around, you know; finally we parked somewhere and just talked. I would have stayed out there all night, but it was his idea to come on back. He said he didn’t want to leave a bad taste in my daddy’s mouth. And look at this—” Evelyn didn’t need to be present to know Ruby was referencing the silver-toned rhinestone brooch she’d seen on her sister’s lapel that morning.
“Be careful,” her mother would interrupt. “You’re old enough to know what can happen when you’re not.”
“Oh, it’s not all that serious, Mother,” Ruby would giggle, and after a few seconds Evelyn would hear her mother giggling too.
Daddy sulked around the house, only partly feigning sadness.
“Both of my girls are leaving me,” he’d pout. But one night after a dinner of smothered pork chops and rice, after he set his toothpick down on the rim of his plate, he said it was time for him to meet these boys—no, men, he corrected—these men who’d zeroed in on his daughters’ hands.
Evelyn couldn’t wait to tell Renard the news the next day. It was Mardi Gras, and though Evelyn would normally be dashing between the St. Bernard Market for seafood for the good gumbo or finishing last-minute hems on the ball gowns, she had never enjoyed those rituals. Renard agreed that there was too much made of the festivities each year, so they decided to attend just Zulu, the highlight of the season. Evelyn woke up early to help her mother fry calas, then after she had eaten a few fritters, she joined Renard and the thousands of others crowding the streets at the head of the New Basin Canal. Once the three floats had passed, the black-faced riders had tossed out all their coconuts, and the bands of music had faded, Evelyn and Renard headed back to Dufon’s and shared an oyster loaf between them. As they ate, she told him about her daddy’s offer to meet him. She thought he’d be as relieved as she was, but he only picked at his portion of the sandwich. Eventually he tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace.
“Andrew will be there too,” Evelyn added.
“I know,” he said, not looking up.
“Isn’t that better? You’ll have less to worry about with your old friend there.”
“Sure,” he said, and he started to say something else, but he stopped himself. “You’re right,” he said, “it will be great. I’ve been wanting to meet your parents. It had to happen sooner or later.”
She tried to console him. “They’ll love you,” she said, “especially my mother. I think she thought I would stay in the house forever. And my daddy loves the idea of having a doctor for a son-in-law, and you should see how he’s been grinning. He’s sad his little girls are all grown up, but he’s proud too, I can tell.”
Renard smiled a little wider, but it was still forced.
Later, after he dropped her off, his mood began to affect hers. She thought about all the ways Ruby or her mother might ruin her night. Her sister would probably monopolize conversation, steer it toward Andrew and his glory so Daddy might think she’d gotten the better catch. Or Ruby might goad Renard into saying something improper to her. That had never happened, and Evelyn couldn’t imagine Renard actually giving in to Ruby’s taunts, but in the light of Evelyn’s dismal talk with Renard it seemed likely. Evelyn’s mother had been saying she was excited, and she’d even taken Evelyn aside one night after dinner to tell her she was proud of her for becoming a lady, but who knew what she’d say when she actually saw Renard, when she was actually in the presence of another man who adored her daughter as much as Daddy did? Mother wasn’t a devil; she wanted to be happy for her child, Evelyn knew that, but something about the moments in which Evelyn commanded love turned Josephine against her firstborn every time.
The morning of the dinner, Evelyn and Renard agreed to meet at the Sweet Tooth. Renard was waiting for her as she walked up, pacing.
“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked when she reached him.
He pulled her to him. “I don’t think I have it in me to meet your father today,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Evelyn stroked his back the way she’d seen her mother rub her daddy’s, up and down, up and down, then in a full circle.
“I’m not like Andrew and the other boys. Andrew could hold a conversation with President Roosevelt if he needed to. I ain’t had to talk to nobody but my sisters for most of my life. What yo daddy gon’ think of me?” He looked down at his shoes and motioned toward them. “I tried to polish ’em today, but wasn’t no use. Only so much you can shine shit.”
Evelyn had never heard him speak in anything but the King’s English, and she had to stop herself from portraying her alarm. “Don’t say that, baby,” she said, still rubbing his back, and she said it again when she could think of nothing else to follow it. “It will be a privilege for my daddy to meet someone like you.” She thought to slacken her tongue to even them out a little. “At the end of the day, ain’t we all just Negroes?”
“But he did something with hisself. He live over there in that fancy house. And he got him a nice high yellow wife. That’s something.” He held his head up suddenly from where it had been dangling. “That’s something.”
“And you’re going do the same thing, baby.”
“If you’ll have me.” He seemed to be calming.
“I wouldn’t have anybody else.” They kissed there for the first time. He pulled her closer to him, and she felt him stretching toward her beneath his pants, needing her. She had a primal urge to take him to the alley behind one of the stores and pull him inside her. She didn’t know what it all entailed, but she would figure it out. Instead they started walking. They didn’t say a word; still, she seemed to feel better with each step as if the anticipation of the night was wafting off of her as she moved. She felt Renard relax too. Before she knew it they had reached the end of Esplanade Avenue and were staring up at the broad magnolia trees of City Park. Evelyn was hot as a layer of hell from the walk, and the large trees beyond the park entrance taunted her with their shade. Of course she didn’t dare go in. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with a handkerchief and caught her breath.
“One day we’ll be able to walk in there,” Renard whispered. “Sit under the magnolias, climb up the steps of the museum.” He pointed to the end of the park where tall columns marked the entrance to the Delgado Museum of Art.
“Of course,” she said, to assuage him. She didn’t know whether that day would come in her lifetime, nor was she so eager to pass into territory people blocked her from. Her life was all right.
But Renard stepped forward. She held his hand beside her, parked where she stood, but he kept walking, gazed in at the winding paths and sparkling lake as though something he’d longed for his whole life lay before him. He let go of her hand, and she called for him. Just before he turned his back, she heard a voice behind her.
“Get back, nigger, you know you’re not supposed to be in there.”
Renard stopped where he stood. Evelyn turned to see a red-faced officer clutching the baton at the side of his waist.
“He wasn’t going in, Officer. He knows the law,” Evelyn called out. It was second nature for her to plead like a little girl in front of whites, and she didn’t notice that she did it now, only that the officer took his hand off the club at his side.
She felt him sizing her up, but she looked down before he could get any ideas.
“Well, all right, just get on then,” he said after a minute, and he waited for them to leave.
Evelyn hustled over to Renard and grabbed his hand. She was prepared to run all the way back down Esplanade, but she had to pull Renard behind her.
She assumed the day was over after that. They walked back home in silence of a different sort than the o
ne that had led them in—this one seemed to weigh on them, leave them heavier with each step. Evelyn didn’t know what to expect by the time they reached Miro Street. She was certain he wouldn’t make it to dinner now, and she didn’t even hold it against him. Something about brushing up against their limitations made her understand the sense of weakness he’d been referencing earlier, and she understood too that it might show up and announce itself in front of a man like her father. But he turned to her, smiled even, said, “I’ll see you tonight,” and it came out so sturdy she might have thought she had imagined his anxiety an hour earlier.
“Oh, Renard,” she squealed. “I wasn’t sure what you would do, after what just happened.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t let anything like that shoo me away. If anything, it only confirmed it. We’re all we have. Like you said, we’re all Negroes anyway.”
Back home, Evelyn tended to the normal Saturday chores: dusting her bedroom, bleaching the toilets, scrubbing the hard wood with vinegar until it shined. Ruby had sometimes helped her in the past, but since Andrew had come into her life, Ruby’s time tending to anything but him was long gone. Once Evelyn finished, she
ventured out into the kitchen for a cool glass of lemonade. As
she was setting the pitcher back, her mother cornered her between the icebox and the stove. She hunched over so close Evelyn could smell the late-afternoon coffee on her breath.
“Does Renard like veal?” her mother whispered, picking at the hair that had strayed from her loose bun.
Evelyn was relieved by the question’s minor nature. “I’m sure. He’s not picky, Mother.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I asked you. Does he like it?”
Evelyn nodded. “I think I remember him saying he loved the taste of a nice veal,” she lied.
Mother jerked her head toward her. “Well, I was planning to roast it with some celery and onions and bell peppers. And then I would bake a pan of macaroni and cheese with the long spaghetti noodles and a tomato salad. I don’t suppose he would have an issue with that. I would have made fish but we’ve been eating it every Friday.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Whatever you make will be delicious, Mother.”
It was only when her mother had ushered her out into the dining room and Evelyn was alone with the place settings and the cloth napkins that she wondered what had come over the woman. Evelyn had never seen her doubt herself in the kitchen or otherwise; Mother threw receptions and parties nearly every month of the year, and guests never left without complimenting her gumbo or sweet potato pie or just the careful way she organized the flowers, linens, and centerpiece just so. Evelyn wondered too if Mother had been just as eager to please Andrew, if she had the same conversation with Ruby; Evelyn hadn’t heard anything, but if not, why? Why would Mother be more nervous about Renard?
A little while later, Ruby burst into the parlor carrying a bunch of tulips.
“Is that for dinner?” her mother asked.
“No, indeed. They’re from Andrew, for me.” Ruby held her head high and back; the pink blossoms had started to wilt, but they might as well have been an engagement ring.
“Hmph, well, go get changed and help me in this kitchen,” Mother snapped.
Ruby took her sweet time anyway and managed to come out only once Evelyn and Mother had completed all the tasks.
“What a coincidence. Just in time to taste the veal,” their mother huffed.
“It’s perfect,” Evelyn said, wiping the gravy from her mouth, piling the compliments on so her mother might relax.
“Real good, Mama, a little salty though,” Ruby added.
At that, Evelyn pinched her sister, Ruby swiped her back with a wet towel, and their mother smacked them both on the bottoms with the palm of her hand.
“What did I do?” Evelyn screamed. “Ruby’s the rude one.”
Mother just glared back, unaccustomed to managing the conflict. It wasn’t that Ruby hadn’t tried to antagonize Evelyn for years, it was just that Evelyn had always preempted the attacks by catering to her sister’s needs before Ruby even knew she had them. If Evelyn sensed Ruby was on the rag, she’d make her a sugar sandwich; if it was a Monday and a boy hadn’t asked Ruby out, Evelyn would compliment her on her figure. Oh, I wish I had your breasts, she might say. Even Brother’s are bigger than mine, and Ruby would laugh Evelyn into a net of safety. But since Renard had come along there had been a great change in Evelyn. Who was Ruby to criticize their mother’s cooking when Mother had spent the morning straining her nerves into a jumble? Who was she to waltz in twenty minutes before a dinner party with flowers in her hair? Evelyn was tired of her sister’s whims, her privilege, her moods, and her authority in thinking the whole house needed to be privy to them.
Their mother just shooed them into their bedroom, and the sisters sat in silence there until the doorbell rang. When Evelyn walked out, her parents were standing at the front door whispering.
“Let’s not make them wait, Nelson,” her mother said, still grim faced.
And even when Renard and Andrew walked in with flowers, Mother didn’t adopt her normal state of ease. Evelyn was concerned. She found that with her mother on edge, she couldn’t relax either. She fulfilled the expected duties: She ushered her man into the house and introduced him; she set the flowers he brought in a vase on the kitchen counter; she spoke in an educated manner about the riot in Detroit. But the ease she had hoped to feel introducing her new family to her old one escaped her.
Renard, on the other hand, soared. When Daddy remarked that Negroes expecting Roosevelt to address the violence against blacks were going to die waiting, Renard agreed, adding that it was educated folk like Thurgood Marshall who were changing things in this country. He remarked with a genuine air that their mother could have been their sister. He ate every morsel of food on his plate and asked for seconds. He raved with Brother about Satchel Paige’s three scoreless innings at the last East-West All-Star Game. Evelyn had worried that Renard and Andrew would compete with each other, but neither man took over the table, and instead they yielded it to each other. Renard went on about Andrew’s father’s intelligence. And Andrew gushed over Renard’s work ethic, said that he would surely be a doctor one day, and that anyone who was treated by him would be lucky. Even Ruby praised Evelyn’s bread pudding.
“I don’t like raisins,” she said, “and you usually overdo it with them, but the way you plopped them so scarce in here, you can barely taste them, Evelyn.”
After dinner, Evelyn helped her mother with the dishes, and the men snuck off to the parlor for cigars and whiskey.
When Evelyn was done, she joined them. Both men were seated on the sofa, Daddy in between them. Andrew was shouting.
“Have you read the Courier? All I know is we have a duty to give our all to the war effort, and maybe when we exercise our duty this country will start to exercise theirs.”
Daddy scoffed. “Don’t hold your breath waiting. Anyway, remember, son, the likelihood is you won’t be flying planes or healing the sick over there. You’re going to be serving meals, cleaning quarters, digging graves.”
Andrew shrugged. “Maybe in the beginning. But after a while when things heat up, they’re going to need more of us. And that’s when it will all be worth it, when we’ll be able to prove ourselves.”
“Prove yourself how? By getting killed? Or better yet, you’ll be like that Simmons boy in Tremé, heard of him?”
The boys shook their heads.
Daddy smirked as he spoke. “He was a mail clerk in France. Got sent home after he lost his leg, came back to an opening at the post office down on Loyola. He rode over there and took the test, thought he was a shoo-in. Veterans were supposed to have first preference after all, and he made the highest mark of anybody, but you think they hired him?” Daddy repeated, “You think they hired him?”
Neither boy answered.
Renard looked at Evelyn before he spoke. He cleared his throat and took a sip of his water. Evelyn whispered a little prayer.
“Well, I think we’re living in a state of hypocrisy bigger than any this country has ever seen,” he started.
“Amen,” Daddy shot in, seeming surprised by his own agreement.
“And something has to be done so that we don’t sacrifice our lives just to come back still not quite American. Let’s say we are victorious overseas, what’s going to come of the next generation of Negroes here? I mean, before I defend this great nation with my life, I’d want to know that we as a people would be guaranteed full citizenship rights upon our return.”
“Exactly, exactly, now this brother has some sense. I’m going to call you Ernest Wright from now on, set you up out there on Shakespeare Park.” Daddy smiled at Renard, but it was Andrew whom he slapped on the thigh.
Renard looked up at Evelyn again, this time with gratitude. And she was proud of him; she’d expected half his speech to come out in stammers, and none of it had, and from what she could understand, it was profound; even her daddy had said so. Still she couldn’t internalize his joy; her mother’s mood alarmed her. Evelyn knew because of Mother’s concern over Renard’s preferences that she wasn’t being malicious. No, she had assessed the situation and determined there was cause for concern somewhere, but Evelyn couldn’t locate it, and that was what spooked her worst of all.
Evelyn walked Renard out that night, fighting herself to be as happy as he was.
“Did you hear it when your daddy called me son?” he asked. “He did, Evelyn, he did. I never heard that word come out like that before.”
A Kind of Freedom Page 4