“I guess so.” Richard stood up, balanced his books in the crook of one elbow, and held out his other hand. Before I could take it, he pulled it back. He’s pretending he didn’t offer. I gathered my books, holding them close with my hands locked together. Now I’m pretending I didn’t notice.
“Want to get a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
We headed toward the Union. Once again, I thought everyone was looking. Do people always pay attention to people walking the other way? I never thought about it. Everyone has eyes. What do they usually look at?
For once, the cafeteria was nearly empty. We sat down with our trays. He thinks I didn’t want to touch his hand. Maybe he saw the way people were staring too. Talk about something else.
Nothing came to mind. I looked around, waiting for something to occur to me. At the far end of the room, a middle-aged man in a suit gathered his briefcase and tray to leave. As he walked toward the counter, he stumbled over a chair and dropped the tray onto the terrazzo floor. The dishes smashed, coffee and food slopped all over. He grabbed some napkins from a table to clean his clothes. A light-brown woman in a green uniform hurried to pick up the shards of his dishes. The man scrubbed at his shirt and walked off without looking back. The maid fetched a mop and bucket and cleaned the floor.
Richard watched them. After a moment, I said, “Could I see your apartment?”
He turned to me, his face surprised and open. “It’s not much, Kathy. Even the landlord calls the place ‘the Ghetto.’”
“I want to see it.”
We didn’t talk as we walked past the campanile and the drama building, past the edge of the campus to East Chimes Street. Next door to a greasy-smelling diner was a long gray apartment building. This was where the hippies had lived, such hippies as were left in Baton Rouge after the serious ones hitchhiked to San Francisco.
Richard had the first-floor place at the back. It was a one-room apartment, clean but dingy just the same. Stains on the ceiling showed where the plumbing upstairs had overflowed. He didn’t have much furniture—a flimsy table with scratched paint, a couple of straight chairs that didn’t match, and a mattress on the floor, made up taut and perfect with a paisley bedspread. And a board-and-cement-block shelf stuffed with books.
His windows looked out onto a huge fig tree. As I glanced out, I saw a rat eating a fig. Richard must have seen it too. I heard a sharp intake of breath.
I hadn’t felt so ashamed since the time Sharon caught me stealing a pack of gum in the A&P when I was nine. I’m pushing myself on him, and he probably thinks I want him for a boyfriend until the next white guy comes along. Or even that I want to get involved with him in some sick way.
Here I am, invading his privacy—who asked me? He’ll think I’m so patronizing, insisting on seeing his water-stained paint and his cheap furniture and his rat.
“I’m sorry.” Oh, great, now I’m going to cry in front of him. But I couldn’t help it.
He offered his upturned white palms to me for comfort. Does he think he can only touch me in the places where his skin matches mine? I don’t want it to be that way anymore.
I pulled him close and laid my face against his. I had never gone to bed with a man before, never even wanted to. I almost laughed, there in his arms. How could anyone think we’re different in any way that matters?
* * *
On Thanksgiving Day, I woke to a splash of rain blown against my window. The banked-in sky told me that it wasn’t going to let up, but I didn’t mind. Rain was the best we could do in the South to mimic the crisp-weather holiday coziness that we’d learned from children’s books. Years when it was hot and sunny, it didn’t seem like Thanksgiving at all.
In the kitchen, Mom was already fussing. She had the classical radio station on, playing Charles Ives. Cranberries seethed in a copper pot, exploding one at a time with soft pops. A bowl of chopped onions filled the air with tears. I got a cup of coffee and made room for it on the table between a bunch of celery and a stack of old Gourmet magazines.
It looked like Thanksgiving dinner was going to be an even bigger production than usual. I sat at the kitchen table for a few minutes, but Mom worked around me, first on one side and then the other. She didn’t make conversation or even ask for help with the preparations, so I took my coffee back to my room, planning to study. But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept imagining the dinner that evening.
Sharon would be bringing her boyfriend Sam Quinn, who none of us had met. All we knew about him was that he was a doctor at the hospital where she worked. Uncle Joseph and Aunt Ruth were coming—they had Thanksgiving dinner with us every year. And I’d invited Richard.
Impressions of his face came between me and the books. I smiled as I pictured him, gentle and serious. I thought of him trying to please his father and never making it, like me with Mom. Now that we were grown up, didn’t that mean we got to start over with someone else, start over and please each other? I was sure I’d never hold back from Richard—I could give him what he needed.
I hummed a little of a favorite tune, “Song for the Asking.” That was what I felt, that I’d been waiting all my life for someone like Richard. I’d always offered people love, but he was the only one who would put out his hand and take it. So simple, but he was the only one.
Mom’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“Kathy,” she called.
I got up and went to the kitchen. “Yes?”
“Get the centerpiece, would you?”
The china turkey, our Thanksgiving centerpiece for as long as I could remember, was kept on a high shelf. I pulled out the step stool and climbed up to get it. Mom hovered, fretting that I’d break it, so I handed it down to her.
“Okay?” I asked, before I let go.
“Yes.” She smiled at my carefulness. “Could you wash it for me, please? It’s pretty dusty.”
I climbed down and took the turkey back. Mom handed me a plastic dishpan so it wouldn’t get chipped in the sink. I ran hot water into the pan and squeezed in dishwashing liquid, watching dust dissolve from the bird’s colorful plumage. A few bubbles drifted up, reminding me how I’d loved blowing rainbow soap bubbles when I was little. I realized Mom must have bought me the bubble stuff. I imagined her in the market, stopping her cart, tucking the toy in with the groceries. Did she smile, anticipating my fun?
Maybe if I explained now, she’d understand. If she’d give Richard a chance, she’d see he’s a good person.
I was so nervous, I didn’t know if I could even talk. But I decided to say it as best I could. I glanced up, expecting to see her still smiling, but she was peering into the oven with a harassed expression.
Maybe another time.
After lunch, I peeled chestnuts and sliced green beans. A tent of noisy rain enveloped the house. Dad and I went out to the carport for an armload of firewood. Some of the wood was damp, so we used some fat pine and a few cones to get it going. The house began to smell like Thanksgiving, the scent of roasting turkey blending with a whiff of smoke from the fireplace.
Dad and I sat on the carpet in front of the hearth and played blackjack for matchsticks, the way he’d taught me when I was having trouble with arithmetic in grade school. He brought out the nut bowl, a cast-iron piece with a squirrel-shaped nutcracker attached. When I was little, I’d named the squirrel Harry. Or maybe Hairy, because he wasn’t. When I was ten, that had been hilarious.
“Here’s Hairy. Fuzzy Wuzzy wuzza bear,” he reminded me.
I gave him the smile he expected. Hairy made me think of the time when Dad and I could talk to each other. I started picking through the nuts, looking for the ones I liked. Hazelnuts, then pecans.
“You always grab the hazelnuts,” Dad mock-complained. “What have you got against Brazils?”
“They taste like oil-soaked sawdust.” Even if they were good, I couldn’t eat one. Uncle Joseph always calls them “niggertoes.” I hope he won’t say that today. Every time I see a Brazil nut,
I feel ashamed. As if it were me who’d said the word.
Besides, Brazil nuts don’t look like toes at all. Not anyone’s, certainly not a black person’s. Richard’s aren’t shaped like that, and his feet are white along the soles, like the palms of his hands.
As we lay together that first afternoon at his apartment, I ran my finger along his hands where the white side met the brown.
“Do you know how we got white hands and feet?” he asked.
“No.”
“Once upon a time,” he began in a singsong storytelling voice, “all the people were black. But one day, a man came home from hunting, and he had white skin and a strange story. He had found a lake off in the hills that had turned his skin white.
“The people asked him to show them. So, he led the way, and they found the little lake, back there in the woods where no one had ever been before.
“Now, some of those people were greedy, and they pushed and shoved to get to the water first. By the time the others got their turn, there was just enough mud in the lake bed for them to dampen the bottoms of their feet and the palms of their hands. But all the mean people, the greedy people, the ones who shoved, they were white all over.”
“Richard?”
“Mmmm?”
“Where did that story come from?”
“I don’t know. I learned it from my grandfather.”
“Why is it fair for you to talk about white people like we were all the same, but it’s wrong if it’s the other way around?”
He stroked my back silently for a while.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It feels different. But maybe everyone who puts a straw on the camel thinks their own straw is different too. Let’s try to be you and me, if we’re going to be lovers. We won’t be your people and my people, just you and me. Promise?”
“Promise.”
He stroked my back and shoulder a while longer. I was half asleep when he said, “I had no idea it was your first time.”
I was about to tell him it didn’t matter, but I fell all the way asleep before I could say it.
“Penny for your thoughts?” asked Dad.
“No sale.” I pulled my mind back to the present. “They’re worth at least two. More than you can afford.”
“Ha. In that case I’ll have to win all the rest of your matchsticks.”
“Not a chance.”
We played for a while longer. “Dad?”
“Mmmm?”
I felt nervous about asking him, too, but I made myself go on this time. “Do you mind about Richard?”
“He’s a nice young man,” he answered. “We didn’t raise you and Sharon to be prejudiced.” But he looked into the fire as he said it, not at me.
“Does Mom mind?” I asked.
The doorbell rang. I ran and let Aunt Ruth and Uncle Joseph in out of the rain. Right away, Aunt Ruth looked all around the living room and craned her neck to peer through the arch into the dining room. She’d never done that before. Whatever she expected to see, though, no one was there but Mom, opening the gate-legged dining table out to its full, awkward length. She glanced up from struggling with it.
“Come make yourself useful, Kathy. Come on in, Ruth. Take off your coat and stay awhile.”
Mom flicked a linen cloth out and smoothed it over the table like she was making a bed. She arranged candles around the china turkey centerpiece, and I set the table—china, silverware, and wineglasses.
Aunt Ruth went into the kitchen and came out wearing Mom’s extra apron. We fetched the cold food from the refrigerator and arranged it like a magazine picture—salad, cranberry sauce, bread sticks, olives, and pickles. Dad opened two bottles of burgundy and put them next to the salad.
The door opened, and Sharon came in with Sam, a sweet-faced, redheaded man who carried a dripping cone of red roses and a bottle of champagne. While Sharon was introducing him around, the doorbell rang again. I opened the door to Richard and a spatter of rain. The wind pushed in ahead of him as he hesitated on the porch.
He was carrying more flowers, white carnations. His face was just as I’d imagined it when I was studying, except that a few raindrops clung to his cheeks. I reached up and brushed them off before I led him into the dining room.
Mom and Dad greeted Richard. The others took turns shaking his hand while I introduced him. They looked him over.
What they saw was a tall young man in a gray suit a few years out of style. His shirt was white. His narrow tie was navy blue. His skin was brown. He stood almost at attention, but his face was open and vulnerable, like a kid who’s hoping he won’t be chosen last for the team.
“Pleased to meet you,” said my uncle. “You a student at Southern?”
“No, LSU. Kathy and I have a class together.”
Uncle Joseph frowned a little. He’d said more than once that the black students ought to stay over at Southern. But he just asked, “What’s your major?” the way he would ask any student.
“Engineering.”
What did you expect, a rock musician? You can relax. He’s a professional man. Like Sam.
I took the flowers into the kitchen to put in a bowl for the sideboard. As I was arranging them, Richard’s and Sam’s together, the rain hammered against the window as the wind turned to the north. I heard a crash as one of our loose shutters banged against the house.
Someone in the dining room cried out, and I rushed in to see what was wrong. One leaf of the table was collapsing, and dishes were falling on the floor like an avalanche. Sam grabbed the leaf and wrestled it back into place. Then Richard came crawling out from under the table. Sam reached down and helped him stand.
Uncle Joseph, Aunt Ruth, Mom, and Dad stood as still as automatons in a power failure. I was afraid someone would laugh, but the only sound was from a bottle of wine gurgling a dark stain onto the carpet.
Sam’s eyes were sad as he faced Richard’s humiliation.
“’Nam?” he asked.
Richard nodded and turned away.
I took his hand and led him toward the bathroom so he could clean the salad and cranberry sauce off his suit. As we left, I saw Sharon bending to pick shards of the china turkey out of the mess.
After Richard shut the bathroom door, I went back to the dining room, but I hesitated near the doorway. Sam stood near the fireplace, while Uncle Joseph faced him from a few feet away.
“What in hell was that about?” demanded my uncle.
“Vietnam,” said Sam.
“What do you mean, ‘Vietnam’?”
“In battle, you learn to dive for cover when you hear loud noises. Some people unlearn it slower than others.”
“Well, that’s no excuse! Not everyone who went to Vietnam acts like that!” Uncle Joseph took a step toward Sam.
Sam didn’t back up and didn’t raise his voice. “Certainly not my brother. He doesn’t act any way anymore. He died at Khe Sanh.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” my uncle said. “But that boy didn’t have any reason to turn the table over!”
“Were you ever on a battlefield? You go to Korea?”
“No. I was too young.”
“You were lucky you never had to go to war.”
“So?”
“Looks like the war’s come to you now, doesn’t it?” Sam’s voice was cold.
Uncle Joseph abruptly turned away. He plunked himself on the couch and grabbed a magazine. Flipping through pages too quickly to read, he ignored Sam. There wasn’t anything he could say—Sam had hit the nail on the head. Dad didn’t speak up either. He’d had rheumatic fever when he was little, so he’d never even had to think about the draft.
When Richard returned, his apologies were politely brushed aside and talk turned to a plane hijacking—last week’s news. The conversation sounded like an amateur play. Mom brought the turkey and the other hot food from the kitchen, and we gathered around the table. I was nearly in tears. Richard sat silent beside me in his stained suit, his face smiling and closed. I hoped no one el
se noticed he was trembling. We all bowed our heads for Dad to say grace.
“Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to thy service, and make us ever mindful of the needs of others. We ask in Jesus’s name. Amen.”
~ 8 ~
December 1974
San Pedro
Lacey
“I would never gossip about one of my tenants,” said Marilu Collins. Her bracelets clanked as she shuffled the cards. She had a slithery gold cloth draped over the counter, and a couple of scented candles burning. I didn’t know what she meant by “one of my tenants.” Kathy was the only tenant she had.
“Of course not,” I assured her. Marilu wouldn’t gossip—except six days a week and double on Sundays. “That’s not the kind of thing I meant at all. I was thinking I’d like to call her family to get her sizes, maybe her favorite color or something. You know, for Christmas.”
Anyone with a lick of sense would have seen right through this rigmarole. But I figured it was good enough for present company. I kept it sort of incoherent on purpose. At the very least, she’d cut me some slack because I was a customer. That was why I was “consulting” her—even Marilu might not have told me what I wanted to know if I’d turned up out of the blue, asking questions.
“Oh, does your company give Christmas presents?” Marilu’s question caught me by surprise. Here she was, supposed to know all, and she didn’t know Mr. Giannini was the biggest tightwad in town?
“No, they don’t,” I said. Maybe I’d get an Academy Award for this performance. I deserved one. “It’s for a personal gift. I like Kathy.”
“I do too,” said Marilu. “I’m giving her a bead curtain for her apartment.”
I hadn’t seen Kathy’s place, but I did not have her figured for the bead curtain type. I had to fight off the giggles at the idea. If Kathy lived in Marilu’s building long enough, she’d be up to her eyebrows in wind chimes and incense burners. No way she could call the Sally Army to come get the junk, either, not with The Mystic Eye herself right downstairs. I made my face as blank as I could.
“That sounds cute. I know she’ll love it. Anyway, do you have her folks’ address?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly being subtle, but Marilu didn’t seem to catch on. She put the cards back down on the tablecloth. For the moment, she gave up on her attempt to get me into a mystical frame of mind.
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