JEWEL

by LOTT, BRET

  Burton “Burt, ” I whispered to myself still held his hands tight on those rings, pressing down to hold himself up.

  “Let’s go, ” Leston said, and I felt his hand at my elbow, turned and saw him with Brenda Kay holding his other hand, the two of them already headed for where we’d parked.

  He smiled, the cigarette at his lips burned down near to nothing. He said, “They don’t need us here, ” and he winked. “Burt and Bill, ” he said. He took hold my hand, and we started back.

  Now, today, the day I was to finally call to order our lives with simply showing up to a place on Adams off Western, here came my husband, the front door to our home in California closed behind him, his furniture store uniform on, somebody else’s name on his chest, and I was filled with dread and fear and joy at once. This was the day.

  He came to the car, opened his door, and I said, “Morning, Frank, ” to which he’d only stared at me a moment. I reached over, touched a finger to the name on his shirt pocket, said, “Don’t you know anything?

  In California, Burton turns to Burt, Wilman to Bill, Leston to Frank.”

  I smiled again, and hoped he hadn’t seen how my finger’d shaken as I’d pointed.

  “Fank? ” Brenda Kay shouted in the back seat, and leaned forward both hands on top of the seat between us.

  “You’re nervous, ” he said to me. He smiled, started the engine, put a hand on the top of the seat, backed us out. He said to Brenda Kay “Miss Jewel Hilburn’s moved us all the way out here to Los Angeles to meet with them folks at the Association of Retarded People, and now she’s afraid of why she did it.”

  “You are just too perceptive, ” I said, and felt my hands holding too tight to my purse once again. “Just too, Mr. Leston Hilburn.” I paused.

  “And it’s the National Association for Retarded Children.” I still hadn’t told him of the Umbrella Group, hadn’t told him I was headed somewhere else this morning, a place I knew nothing of.

  He smiled again, fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette he’d already rolled, his fingers digging under Frank. He pulled one out, put it to his lips. He looked at me, his eyes all squinted up as if it were already lit. He said, “You don’t think I know the name of this outfit? ” We were out on the street now, and he put the car into gear, but didn’t give it any gas. We sat in the middle of the street a moment and I said, “Shouldn’t we get a move on? ” “Just don’t you worry now, ” he said. “You don’t. About today.”

  “Remember who you’re talking to, ” I said, and tried to give him a smile might convince him just to drive us to Pico Furniture. I just wanted to get him out the car, leave me to find out what we’d come here for.

  CHAPTER 26.

  I HAD NO PROBLEMS FINDING THE PLACE, JUST AS THE OFFICE GIRL AT N. A.

  R.

  C. had told me, it was off Western, which I’d taken down from Pico and just followed light to light to light until I hit Adams, then turned right.

  They were nice homes set back farther on the lots than most houses I’d seen since we’d moved here, houses with green lawns and flowerbeds and bushes, honeysuckle and climbing roses and palm trees. The houses were older, you could tell by the gingerbread and touches they had, and’d seen a better time than right now, some were clapboard with a little chip here and there where the paint was bubbling up, some had that white stucco, but with the faintest tinge of green to it where moss’d started in, and some were brick, now and again the mortar loose and crumbling.

  But most all of them were in fine shape, positively better than the house we lived in. I wondered as I crawled the car along, looking for 2151, how pleasant it’d be to live here.

  Then I spotted it, a gray house with white trim, a big porch out front almost like what you might find back in one of the finer homes in Purvis. The second story had dormers poking out, and in the front yard stood a magnolia.

  A magnolia.

  The first space I could find to park was four or five houses down, where, I saw, I’d have to parallel park this monster of a car, and I could just imagine what any passerby might think when he saw what was going on, a woman with Mississippi tags on her car, a retarded girl in the front seat, the woman trying to maneuver this car too big for her into that tiny spot. But it was the only spot I could see for the next block or so, the street jammed with cars all sparkling and clean and new.

  I pulled up even with the car in front of my spot, then turned in the seat, put my arm on top of it like I’d seen Leston do a million times before, and I started backing up.

  A little nigger boy stood on the sidewalk back there. He was looking at me, and waved a hand at me, motioned me to back up.

  I smiled at him through the rear window, started back as he waved and waved. Then he put up his hand to stop me, made a whirling move with his hand, what I took to mean Cut the wheel the other way, which I did.

  We went like this a minute or two, him motioning, me following, until I’d finally got the car nestled into place, snug between two cars I climbed out, came round to give him my proper thank you, but he was already gone, moving up the sidewalk. Though his back was to me, I could see for the first time how well he was dressed, navy blue pants with a sharp crease, a white shortsleeve dress shirt, shiny black shoes. Hung from his shoulder was a leather strap cinched round a pile of books that bounced on his back as he walked away.

  I called out, “Thank you! ” He turned, walked backwards a moment. He had on a thin, black tie, and he gave the smallest of nods, his chin jutting up in the air only a moment. He turned back, headed off.

  I didn’t know what to think, though he’d been the one to help me, done me that favor, nigger children in Mississippi never just jutted their chin when you spoke to them, but always gave answer. And they didn’t couldn’t dress like that, except on Sunday mornings. But, as with everything I’d discovered so far, this was a new world, one I had no way to figure how it worked.

  I turned back to the car, opened the door for Brenda Kay. She stared out the windshield a moment longer, as though she, too, were watching the boy.

  I said, “Let’s come on now, Brenda Kay. There’s people to meet.” I reached down, touched her hair. I had it back in pretty red barrettes today, had her dressed in pink slacks and a pink and white striped blouse, her shoes all shined up pretty and white. I reached to her lap, took her hand. “Come on now, Brenda Kay, ” I said, and then, for no other reason than that I’d never heard the words from me before, I said, “There’s a new world here and waiting for us.”

  There’d been no one to hear them, only my daughter. But they were the best words I knew I could speak right then, could pass on to my daughter. This was why we were here, Brenda Kay, and that gray house with the white trim and big porch.

  I held her hand tight, felt my palms begin to go wet, and I pulled her up. Brenda Kay turned in the seat and placed her white shoes out onto the curb, and stood.

  “There, ” I said. “There, ” and I looked at her. She still had no look in her eyes, her mouth clamped shut for whatever reason. I said, “Now give us a smile here, ” and reached to her hair again, tucked a single thin strand of it back behind her ear. JEW I, L “Let’s see a smile, ” someone said from behind me, and I quick turned, startled at the sound of a different voice out here.

  A nigger woman stood there on the sidewalk, in front of her a baby carriage. She was looking at Brenda Kay, smiling, and I could feel my own smile trying to come up on me, trying to make its way onto my face.

  I said, “Good morning, ” and thought I’d said it maybe too quick.

  She nodded, our eyes meeting and holding a moment. She was a high yellow, but it was her hair I saw and took in first, straight, bobbed under at her shoulders, parted at the top in the middle. Then I saw what she had on, a pale lavender dress, pearl buttons up the front, a lavender belt at her waist, the skirt of the dress all flounced out and full. And she had on lavender high heel shoes.

  She said, “You of course are with the Foundation, ” and
, still smiling, nodded toward Brenda Kay. “We’re happy you folks are here.”

  But her words weren’t meaning much to me just then, I only watched her lips moving, saw she wore deep red lipstick, saw, too, she had on rouge, and that her eyebrows’d been penciled in.

  “Yes, we are, ” I struggled out, the words feeble and useless, I knew.

  “At least we’re about to be, that is, ” I said. With the Foundation.”

  “Mississippi, ” she said, and leaned back a little, nodded to the rear of the car. “I saw your plates, ” she said, and looked back at me.

  “My grandfather was from Mississippi. Up around Oxford, I think.”

  “Oh, ” I said, then said, “We’re from Purvis, down near to Hattiesburg, ” and found my breath was slow and shallow, me here on the street and talking to a nigger woman I’d never seen before, just passing the time of day. And her wearing clothes I’d never imagined I might wear.

  Lavender shoes.

  “Momma! ” Brenda Kay said, and I felt like her word was some sort of salvation, her demanding of me my attention, and I’d forced my smile again. “We’ve got to be getting to the Foundation, ” I said, however hollow I sounded. They were only words.

  “Nice to see you, ” she said, and nodded. She pushed the carriage along again, a carriage shiny and new, the wheels as they turned making no sound at all, and suddenly I saw a picture of Cathe ral barefoot on the road out front the old house in Mississippi, one or another of her boys when they were babies bundled up in an old quilt and tied off on her back, a papoose there as she walked.

  From across the street another woman’s voice shouted, “Dorinda, how’s little Leon? ” I looked, saw on the porch of a red brick house another nigger woman, this one in a bathrobe printed with all kinds of flowers.

  She had her arms crossed against her chest, her hair cut short and curled. Her skin was a little darker than the one with the carriage, and I could see her smiling, her white teeth.

  The one pushing the carriage, this Dorinda, called out, “He’s doing just fine. A little of the croup, but nothing this fresh air won’t help.”

  “You call me, girl, ” the other woman hollered, and I watched as she went to the edge of the porch, stepped down to the concrete walk that went up the middle of the lawn, and bent over, picked up the newspaper Lying there.

  “In a while, ” Dorinda called out, still pushing the carriage, and the woman with the robe waved, went back up on the porch, and disappeared inside.

  They lived here.

  I took Brenda Kay’s hand, my eyes looking everything over, wondering what could go on in this neighborhood, what caused niggers to live this way. There were four houses we had to pass, and I found as we walked along the sidewalk that the concrete suddenly seemed cracked and cracked, narrow strips of grass growing up between those cracks to make it look a little more shabby than when we’d driven up. And the green in the stucco of these homes seemed a shade heavier, the loose mortar even looser, though I knew it was all in my head, all me and my making up reasons why these niggers couldn’t live in such fine houses, when we ourselves lived in a house with a driveway not big enough to hold our car.

  Each step I took seemed filled with a new and uneasy feeling, as though the world were breaking up beneath us as we moved. My life was being swallowed up more and more each day by this strange place, California, liquor stores and lawyers, two-piece swimsuits and luxurious niggertowns, at the center of it all my Brenda Kay and me, struggling with each step we took just to stand in the middle of this brand-new place.

  Then we came to 2151, and I stopped, looked to left and right. This was it, the place where whatever’d start next in our lives was going to start.

  I took Brenda Kay’s hand, held it tight, and we started up the walk, moved up the three steps and onto the porch. The door was a big oak affair, stained and beautiful, with a leaded glass window I couldn’t see through. Next to the door was a brass plaque, not much different than the one Leston and I’d walked up to and read at Dr. Basket’s office in New Orleans all those years back. But now we were at 2151

  Adams, and this plaque was shiny and looked new, and held out to me a whole barrel full of promise, not like the somber fear Dr. Basket’s old and tarnished plaque had given me. This plaque read, The Exceptional Children’s Foundation Nathan White, Director Though there was a small black button on a switchplate next to the plaque, I didn’t want for whatever reason to push it, didn’t want to hear a doorbell sound through the glass before us. We were small, I suddenly saw, me only a cracker from Mississippi showing up here to the door with my retarded child, my Brenda Kay, and so I reached up a hand to the leaded glass, hesitated a moment longer just one more moment of this life, because who knew what would come next? Who knew, other than God up in heaven, what would come next?

  I knocked. I looked at Brenda Kay, saw that single strand of hair fallen back out of place. How could I have missed it when I’d pulled back her hair this morning? I wondered, and I reached up, tucked it back behind her ear again, her eyes straight ahead, mouth still tight closed.

  My hand still there at Brenda Kay’s hair, the front door opened up wide, and there stood yet another nigger woman, this one young and beautiful, high cheeks and a fine straight nose. Her hair was pulled back tight into a bun, and she had on makeup, too, and was smiling at us.

  I took my hand down from Brenda Kay’s ear like I’d been caught red-handed at something. I swallowed. I tried to smile, tried and tried, and finally tore my eyes from her, glanced aside at that shiny plaque. I said, “We’d like to see Mr. White, if we could.”

  She stepped back from the door, opened it even wider, and made a sweeping gesture with her free hand to lead us in. “Please, ” was all she’d said, and it sounded like a word from a movie the way she said it, her mouth all in a smile, her eyes smiling, too, really meaning it.

  This from a nigger woman dressed in a white blouse with a high collar and a black skirt, and though I was glad she wasn’t all gussied up in lavender like the one on the street, already I was wondering if, were I to end up enrolling Brenda Kay here, she’d be in a class full of retarded nigger children.

  She closed the door behind us, Brenda Kay’s hand in mine now, and said, “Do you have an appointment? ” I turned, faced her, said, “No, actually. We do not.” I glanced at the floor, sparkling hardwood, buffed and polished and gleaming, a shaft of morning light fell in through a window to my right and lit up the wood, and I could see in the air dust motes sailing and sailing, just hanging there in the air.

  “Well then, ” she said, “we’ll see if we can’t get you in to see him.”

  She paused, and I looked up, saw she was looking at Brenda Kay.

  “My name’s May, ” she said to her, and Brenda Kay looked to me a moment, just like she always did, then back to the woman.

  “This here is Brenda Kay Hilburn, ” I said, and reached out, touched my daughter’s arm. “I’m her momma, ” I said, “Mrs. Jewel Hilburn.

  We just moved here not a long time ago, a couple months. The people over to the National Association for Retarded Children said we’d do best to come see y’all.” S “Hey! ” Brenda Kay said, and smiled. Then she looked at me, said, “Thedral, Momma! ” and turned back to May.

  “No, ” I said to her, “not Cathe ral, ” and I was surprised at how she’d remembered her from three years past. There hadn’t been talk of her even allowed in our house.

  I turned to the woman, saw she had a puzzled look behind the smile she held. I smiled, said, “She’s talking about Cathe ral, a nigger woman who took care of her when she was little. Back in Mississippi.”

  She lost the smile as soon as that word niggenvoman crossed my lips, and I knew right then it was the wrong word, though I’d never in my life felt any kind of embarrassment at uttering it. But I knew it was the wrong word, here in the foyer of a fine home in Los Angeles in a nigger neighborhood, a foyer suddenly too much like Missy Cook’s old place in Purvis, a few fe
et away a staircase ran up to a landing at a window that looked, I imagined, out onto the back yard, and I thought a moment on seeing my and my momma’s clothes burned in the pecan orchard back of Missy Cook’s house, and on my momma’s rocker going up in flames, too. To my left was what looked like it’d been a dining room, big windows looking out on the front yard, chairs spread against the walls, to my right was a smaller room with a big oak desk, on it stacks of paper, a blotter, a telephone, a lamp, next to it, on a smaller table, was a typewriter.

  And as I took all this in, I realized what I was really doing, avoiding the eyes of this woman, May.

  “Okay, ” May said. She turned from us, headed into the room with the desk. Once behind it she smiled again, pointed to the room behind us, where the chairs sat. “You can have a seat, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  I nodded, smiled, turned to Brenda Kay. We two moved into the dining room, where in one corner, next to the window, stood a potted tree, something I hadn’t seen from the foyer. Brenda Kay walked l . s right over to it, took one of its small leaves in her hand, rubbed it between her fingers. I sat on the smallest, hardest chair I could find, some sort of punishment I couldn’t figure out why I was giving myself.

  From where I sat I had clear view into the parlor across the foyer, and to May, who was half-turned from us, the telephone to her ear. She was talking low into it, and then she stopped, listened a moment, nodded.

  She had a pen in her hand, was writing something on a piece of paper on the desktop. Then she smiled, her eyes on the piece of paper in her hand, and said one more word, hung up the phone.

  “Mr. White will see you now, ” she said, and stood. “He’s only got a few minutes while the children finish up with morning exercise. Then he’ll have to be back in the classroom.”

  I stood, went to Brenda Kay, still at the tree, and took hold her hand.

  Then we were in May’s office, her leading us to a door to my left.

  She opened the door for us, and our eyes met, the two of us smiling, and for one last moment I wondered whether this Mr. White himself was a nigger, the irony of his name right there in my face, Mr. White, and I wondered if that wasn’t what she’d been smiling at all along.