“Well, I guess I would rather live in New Orleans anyway. Maybe next year.”
That was all he would say about it. Maybe someday, maybe some—other—day. But I was worried about Green Coat, and about Richard—and I was starting to worry about next year. I’d been using birth control foam from the drugstore, a brand that claimed to be “98% effective.” Who expects to be part of a minority of 2 percent?
One day in January, after the start of the new semester, we went to lunch at a pizza place downtown. The restaurant was dark and salty smelling, cheese and pepperoni. While we waited for our pizza, we ate peanuts and drank Cokes. I did a quick mood check on Richard—he looked relaxed enough for me to bring up something serious, so I took a deep breath, my heart pounding. I have no idea how to say this, but I’d better tell him something.
But I missed my moment—he spoke first. “I think I’m going to change my major.”
Can’t tell him now. I felt almost as relieved as if I’d just gotten my period. “Why? You never said you didn’t like engineering.”
“I guess I started in engineering because that’s what my father always wanted. But I don’t fit in over there. It’s not grades. I’m just not the type.”
“I thought you liked it.”
“I do, but I’m not crazy about engineers. They’re mostly people who’d rather deal with things than people.”
“So, what do you want to major in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe government or law, somewhere I might make a difference. . . . I don’t know. . . . I’m probably talking crazy.”
“Maybe psych?”
“If I went into psych, maybe I could do something to help other veterans. God knows, I have enough problems—moods, nightmares—but I’m pretty mild, considering. Or even in law, maybe I could do something. Lots of those guys get into all kinds of trouble.”
“I didn’t know you had nightmares.”
“Kathy, I don’t want to dump all that stuff on you. I don’t want to be some invalid you feel sorry for.”
“Damn it, Richard, that’s the last thing on my mind.”
The waiter came with the pizza. Talk got lost for the moment in hot olives and stringy cheese.
As we ate, I watched Richard in the dim light of the restaurant. He’s happy now—his face is sweet and open. I want to trail my fingers over his soft hair and smooth face. Why is it so sexy, the way he’s turned his shirt cuffs back? His wrists and hands. . . . I can tell him at his place, after we make love—that’s better.
He caught my eye and smiled. “Want to go to my place after lunch?”
I nodded. We paid quickly and left. Chimes Street was half dug up and full of yellow construction trucks, so I parked around the corner. As we walked to the apartment, I could only think of holding Richard, loving him. But when he stopped short a few feet from his door, I came out of my dream.
Against the gray of the building were two bright spots. One, on the wall by the door, was a bright red swastika. The other, an orange lump right in front of the door, was Mew. His head was cut off, lying on the porch beside him.
I turned and ran. When I reached the corner of the building, I realized Richard wasn’t behind me. I looked back—he was standing frozen at the door.
“Richard!”
He looked at me for a second as if he had no idea who I was. Then he walked slowly toward me. I wanted to scream with fear and impatience.
Green Coat is somewhere, watching this.
I grabbed his hand and jerked him along University Avenue and around the corner to my parking place. I didn’t know what else to do, so I drove us to my parents’ house. Richard looked out the side window all the way there, as if he were interested in the scenery. He laid his hands on his knees, but they wouldn’t stay still—once I saw him clasp them together, but when he laid them back on his lap, they started shaking again. I couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort him—I wanted him to take care of me.
When we got home, I sobbed out the story. Mom got up and left the room without a word. Dad called the police. They told him there was nothing they could do.
“Nothing they will do is more like it,” he added as he told us what they’d said. “I’m sorry, Richard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Richard . . . .” Dad ran his hand over his face like he had a headache. “I don’t want to be rude, but I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘sir.’”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Woodbridge. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just a habit from the army.”
“Not your fault. Richard, why don’t you stay in the guest room here tonight? You can’t go back there. We’ll think of something in the morning.” Dad didn’t look like he expected a solution then or anytime. He tried to smile, to be a good host. He looked kind of like a gargoyle.
After dinner, Richard and I sat in the living room while Dad moved quietly around in the kitchen. I was too keyed up to go to bed.
Richard found the morning paper in a basket by the couch and scanned the front-page section. As if the news was important.
I don’t believe this. He isn’t even taking me seriously now. “He’ll be back—he’ll do something else.”
“What if he does? Now that I’m on my guard, I don’t think a teenage redneck can do much to me.”
“There’s fifty more like him, especially if you get into a fight. Don’t get all macho on me. I’m sure you’ve heard the white supremacist types ranting every chance they get.”
“Who hasn’t? I’ve seen other students shout them down, too. I doubt many people would go along with them. Fifty is a wild exaggeration.”
“It doesn’t take fifty. Two or three is enough to get us killed.”
“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” He opened the paper, dismissing my concern with the flick of its pages.
“I think having Mew’s head cut off was a little dramatic too.” Jesus. . . . What would these guys do to me when I started looking pregnant? What would they do to a baby? I started crying again. “I’d be afraid to visit you, wondering who was hiding in the bushes.”
He put his arms around me, but I just cried more. “I want to get out of here,” I said, when I finally got my breath. “Let’s go to New Orleans now. I can’t stand this.”
“We’d have to drop out of school.”
“We can start up again in the fall at NO. Richard, please. Maybe this guy doesn’t scare you. But what makes you think it’s you he’s after? He and his buddies could just as easily attack me. I’m afraid all the time—even when I don’t see him, I’m sure he’s hiding somewhere. Please let’s go to New Orleans.”
Dad came into the room. From the kitchen, he’d heard every word.
“Kathy, the two of you have to face facts,” he said. “Your relationship has some risks. Anywhere. Much as I like you personally, Richard.”
Richard folded the newspaper neatly and stood up. “Thanks, Dr. Woodbridge. I think I’ll say good night now. I should let you and Kathy talk this over in private.” He went back toward the guest room, and I heard the door shut softly.
Dad turned to me. That was when he tried to persuade me that the time hadn’t come yet when Richard and I could live together without being afraid. Maybe I should have listened, but he said his piece and I said mine, and in the end, I went to my room and slammed the door behind me.
In the morning, Sharon and Sam came over. Dad went to the garden shed and got a shovel. They’re going to bury Mew. Under the fig tree, where he liked to lie in the shade.
I pulled Richard aside just inside the back door.
“I’m going to New Orleans,” I whispered. “Richard, I’m pregnant. I can’t stay here. Please come with me.”
His eyes went as blank as Little Orphan Annie’s.
“Ready, Richard?” Dad called from the carport. Without a word, Richard turned and left.
When they came back, they had Richard’s clothes and books. I gathered my own things, and we packed my Volkswagen solid. Sharon offered to give us so
me of her household stuff, but there wasn’t any more room in the car.
Dad shook his head, but he pushed some money into my hand. I tried to give it back, but he wouldn’t take it. Sam, Sharon, and Dad watched us drive away, waving as if everything were all right. Mom didn’t even come out to say good-bye.
It hadn’t seemed like a good time to announce the baby.
Part 3
~ 12 ~
February 1973
New Orleans
Kathy
Once we got settled in New Orleans, we started to relax. Maybe we would have been out of place in the suburbs, but the French Quarter was full of all kinds of people: artists, dropouts, sailors on shore leave, even a few leftover hippies. Besides the transients, there were old-time residents of New Orleans, small tradesmen mostly, whose families had kept the same shops and stands for years.
I went to work for one of them, Eddie Graziano. He had a produce stand in the French Market. He sold the best of everything. Some of the vegetables were real homegrown, from his cousins’ truck farm in Mississippi. Even when he bought at the wholesale market, he was fussy about quality. He wouldn’t let me buy, just weigh and bag and make change.
For his regulars, he still observed the custom of lagniappe, “a little something extra.” It was a sort of bonus—if you bought your beans from Eddie, he’d throw in the herbs to cook them with.
The stand was on the sidewalk, right in the arcade of the market. I perched on a wooden stool when there wasn’t any business, but I didn’t get to do it much. Eddie had a constant stream of customers and friends, and a lot of people who were both.
“No tomahtoes, Eddie?” complained a blue-rinsed lady with a shivering black toy poodle.
“Lucille, it’s February. The tomatoes all taste like papier-mâché. I can’t be giving you that kind of junk. I’d just as soon shut up the stand and go home.”
She sighed in agreement. “What about alligator pears?’
Eddie glanced at me, but I knew that was the local word for avocados. We had some good Hass ones from California, and I helped her choose the closest to ripe. Eddie tucked a bunch of thyme into the bag and glanced at the dog. “Better put Midnight’s coat on him or take him home,” he advised her. “I think it’s coming on to rain.”
“You’re a fussbudget, Eddie. You’ve been a fussbudget for more years than I care to count.” She laughed, but she swooped the dog up into the mink crook of her arm.
As I watched her tapping along down the street in her spike heels, I hoped she could manage to hold onto Midnight and her sack of vegetables both.
Eddie smiled at me, and I tried to smile back. I didn’t feel well—I’d come to work almost as tired as I’d been when I left the day before. I felt queasy, too—the fumes of Eddie’s kerosene heater cut through the coffee scent from the Morning Call and the clay smell of the river. Gusts of wind added a sharp whiff of the fish market along the way. I breathed shallowly and tried not to think about it.
A tall man in a trench coat jaywalked toward us across Chartres, waving to Eddie. He came into the arcade, and Eddie shook his hand. The man glanced at me.
“Got a new girlfriend, Eddie?” he asked.
“Naw, this is Kathy,” said Eddie. “Kathy’s got too much class to be my girlfriend.”
“Not surprising,” said the man. “Most any girl does.”
Eddie mock-punched him on the shoulder. “Kathy, this is Buddy. You’ve got too much class to be his girlfriend, too, so don’t give him a chance.”
Buddy picked out some satsumas, and I weighed them for him. Eddie threw in a spray of kumquats.
Richard appeared in the arcade. “There’s my boyfriend,” I said. I introduced them.
“How ya doin’?” said Eddie. “You want to take a break, Kathy?”
“Just a few minutes to get a cup of coffee.”
“You go ahead. I’ll mind the stand. Good to meet you,” he added in Richard’s direction.
We walked past a praline store, where the plywood mammy sign made me cringe. In the Café Du Monde, we sat outside on iron chairs, leaning out of the waiter’s way as he plunked down our coffee and beignets.
“How’s the job going?” Richard asked, pocketing his change.
“Fine, I like Eddie.” I pulled my jacket a little tighter around me and quickly sipped the coffee to warm me up.
“I got one today,” Richard smiled, but his face still looked strained and unhappy.
“A job? Where?”
“Store fixture place. I do the hardware.”
It didn’t sound interesting to me. I couldn’t think of anything to say about the job. We were both quiet for a while, sipping coffee.
“Listen, Kathy,” Richard said. “I did the best I could, but I’m not making much money. There just aren’t any good jobs for high school graduates. And we can’t bring up a baby in a rooming house. How in hell are we going to afford to live?”
I checked the people at the next table. They didn’t seem to be paying attention.
“I’m not going to talk about it.” I cut him off, sick and empty. He’s hinting at an abortion. He doesn’t want our child. Maybe he doesn’t want me either, anymore.
The waiter brushed past us to take an order from another table. Richard ran his hand over his face, leaving a smear of powdered sugar on his chin. He leaned toward me, keeping his voice low.
“Kathy, you don’t have the slightest idea about being a mother. Much less the mother of a black baby,” Richard said. “Think it over. You know you don’t have to keep it.”
“I can’t believe you want me to get an abortion because our baby is black.” I turned away from him.
“It’s not because the baby is black. It’s because you don’t know what you’re getting into.” He raised his voice as a bus roared by, and a group on the sidewalk peered our way.
I looked at them, then sharply at him to warn him to keep his voice down. “That’s what my mother said about you and me. I never thought you’d be singing the same tune.”
“That’s another thing—you aren’t going to get any grandmotherly help from her, that’s for sure.”
“What about your mom?” I asked.
Taboo subject. He drew back and said nothing. One of the Quarter’s tourist carriages stopped at the curb. Richard looked at the mule pulling it, and the mule looked at him. Their expressions aren’t all that different.
“I’ll bet my parents get over it one second after they see their grandchild,” I said. “Any problem will be in the past, unless you hang onto it.”
“Maybe so. But what about everyone else? What about the guy who ran us out of Baton Rouge?”
“Guess we can’t ask him to babysit. So what?”
“Kathy, this baby is black. I don’t think you understand what that means.”
“What do you think I’m going to do? Have an abortion, walk away from you, and get on with my life as a white girl? That would be the stupidest, most awful thing I’ve ever done. No.”
Richard shrugged. I didn’t know if I’d convinced him or if he was just giving up for the time being. We finished our coffee and walked to Eddie’s stand more or less reconciled. He gave me a quick hug and left me to get back to work.
“That’s your boyfriend, huh?” asked Eddie.
“Uh-huh.”
He dragged out an open wood crate of lettuce and undid the wires. I started putting them into our display baskets while Eddie fetched a cardboard box.
Rummaging in the box, Eddie pulled out a bunch of carrots and frowned at it. “He good to you?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Always.”
Eddie looked after Richard. He shook his head. “I missed a lot. My mother wouldn’t have liked me to date a girl who wasn’t Catholic, let alone black or anything like that. I never liked any of the girls my mother liked.”
“So, you never married?” I took the box of carrots and arranged bunches of them around the lettuces.
“No, I lived with Mama till she passed a
way. Eighty-six, she was.” He sounded proud for a minute, then sad again. “I’m alone now. I wish I’d looked around more. I think your generation has it right. Stuff like that shouldn’t matter.”
The lettuces were loose-headed, ruby leaf. The label on the box said “California.” Most of our produce was local, but I guessed it was too cold to grow lettuce around here now. Would California be a good place for us and our baby? Eddie was looking at me, waiting for me to say something.
“Not everyone has it yet,” I told him. “We got chased out of Baton Rouge by someone who didn’t like to see a black guy and a white girl together.”
“Don’t let it get you, doll,” Eddie said. “Think about the good people, let the others go. Just stay out of their way—some of those rednecks are dangerous. I’m not putting Baton Rouge down, but New Orleans is probably better for a couple like you and Richard.”
“We kind of thought we might not be the oddest people in the Quarter,” I said.
Eddie laughed. “That’s for sure!”
“My father says it’s too soon for couples like us.”
“No one wants to see their kids on the front lines, I guess.”
That made me feel a little hopeful. If Dad was just being protective, he wouldn’t want to be the one to hurt me. Or my baby. I set the last of the vegetables out in the display and picked up some broken leaves that had fallen on the pavement. Keeping my voice casual, I asked, “You think that’s all it is?”
“Well, I don’t know your dad. But he raised you right—he can’t be that much of a racist. People get cautious when it comes to their kids. Most likely he only wants the best for you.” He closed the boxes and shoved them under the counter.
“Richard is the best.”
Eddie shrugged and wiped his hands on a paper towel. “If that’s true, your father’ll see it before long. . . . Look out, here comes Estelle.”
Estelle was one of our wackier customers. I thought she had a crush on Eddie. She came every day—she swore she could tell the difference when she got her vegetables “fresh that day.” Eddie didn’t tell her that he didn’t buy most of the produce the same day himself. And her flirting was lost on him. In my opinion, all his talk about missing a wife and kids was just fantasy. He liked being an old bachelor.
Pacific Avenue Page 8