Blanche had told Ardell the trip would be more than a notion, but neither one of them needed for her to say it again. Blanche wanted to talk about Ray-Ray and Miz Barker, but she could tell Ardell needed to be listened to, spoken to in words that hugged, then given an order to go directly to bed—which was exactly what Blanche gave her.
She hung up wishing she could put her own self to rest, but there was someone else she needed to talk to tonight. She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t figure out how else to get into Inez’s house without breaking in. She sat in the middle of the bed with the phone in her lap. She stared at it for a few moments. Did she really need to do this? She’d told Miz Barker she’d try to find out what had really happened to Ray-Ray, but now Miz Barker was dead. Better just to let the whole thing drop. But then she remembered the way Allister Brindle had spoken to her about Ray-Ray’s note and the tape and the way he had looked at her—as if she were something ugly and suspicious that had just crawled into his house. She thought about Samuelson’s phone call and understood what neither of those pig suckers had said: They were prepared to do whatever was necessary to get that tape back. And at least one of them thought she had it or knew where to find it. She punched in the number Cousin Charlotte had left for her and reminded herself not to mention Miz Barker’s death. That news could wait until Cousin Charlotte came home.
She let Cousin Charlotte talk about the plans for Ray-Ray’s funeral, how Inez was holding up, and how good it was to be back in her girlhood home.
“Everything all right up there?” Cousin Charlotte asked when she’d wound down.
Blanche went right to one of her reasons for calling. “Why didn’t you tell me Ray-Ray was gay? Did you know he had a lover who might like to know about the funeral arrangements?”
“Now calm down, Blanche. You know how excited you get. You sound just like your mother when you—”
“Don’t even try it, Cousin Charlotte. You can’t wiggle out of this. I got a right to get just as excited as I want. You loved Ray-Ray, and so did Donnie. And Ray-Ray probably loved him back. I’m sure Ray-Ray would want all his loved ones to at least know about his funeral. What about that?”
“I can’t force nothing on Inez. She’s got her own ideas.”
“I bet she does! Does she make a sign to ward off the evil eye when she talks about Ray-Ray’s gay friends? I hear she called one of his friends unnatural when he came to her house looking for Ray-Ray.”
“It was kinda ugly,” Cousin Charlotte admitted.
“You were there? What happened?”
Blanche could feel Cousin Charlotte settling into her chair like a hen on a couple of eggs.
“Well, I was in the front room when the, er, young man came to the door. In fact, I’m the one who opened the door. He said he was a friend of Ray-Ray’s and asked me if I was Ray-Ray’s mama. Well, I said, ‘No, honey, I’m his…’ ”
Blanche tuned out on the filler. But she didn’t want to interrupt. When Cousin Charlotte was interrupted while telling a story, she often started all over again from the beginning.
“…wished I hadn’t opened the door, but it was too late by then. Inez was a mess, girl. Just a mess. Crying and screaming and trying to push Ray-Ray’s er, um, friend off the stoop. ‘My boy ain’t no freak like you! Don’t come round here tryin’ to act like my boy’s unnatural.’ Inez was screaming at the top of her lungs. She said she knew that young man was trying to turn her Ray-Ray.”
“Trying to what?”
“You know! Turn him into some kind of homo. But Inez said she knew her prayers had protected Ray-Ray. She’s sure he wasn’t really gay. Maybe a mother knows these things.”
Blanche had always suspected Miz Inez didn’t have enough sense to breathe when it came to Ray-Ray. Maybe Cousin Charlotte needed breathing lessons where he was concerned, too.
“Course I tried to calm her down, her blood pressure being what it is and all, but she was right out of control. So, I had to tell that young man he was doing her harm and had no right to come to her house looking for Ray-Ray being, you know, like that.”
Cousin Charlotte had hardly finished talking when Blanche and launched into a lecture on the stupidity of black people being prejudiced against anybody for any reason and moved on to homosexuals in particular.
“Far as I’m concerned, love is love.” Even so, the memory of how she’d recently had to change her own views of Ray-Ray caused her to cut Cousin Charlotte some slack. “It ain’t how you was raised, but that don’t make it wrong.”
Cousin Charlotte responded with one of her silences—the kind that gave new meaning to the saying “If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all.”
Blanche ignored the silence. She reminded herself that she was the one doing the favors and it was time to move on. It would take more time than she could spare to change Cousin Charlotte’s mind, but that didn’t mean she was off the hook.
“Well, you can make up for not telling me about Ray-Ray by bringing Donnie a pressed flower and a burial announcement from Ray-Ray’s funeral.”
More silence.
“And you better tell me where you keep the key to Inez’s house so I can go through Ray-Ray’s things and get them love letters Donnie told me he wrote to Ray-Ray before Inez finds them and has a heart attack.”
Cousin Charlotte cleared her throat. “I’ll see what I can do ’bout a flower and so forth,” she mumbled. “Inez’s key is in my kitchen drawer, the one in the cabinet under the window.”
Blanche thought her next question might smooth Cousin Charlotte’s feathers, or at least distract her.
“How come Ray-Ray stopped working for the Brindles?” Blanche could feel Cousin Charlotte struggling with her indignation at being criticized on the one hand and her natural inclination to talk on the other. Nature won.
“Now, you know, I wondered that very same thing myself. All Inez would tell me was that Ray-Ray and Mr. Brindle had some kinda shouting match. When I asked her about what, she shut them skinny lips of hers tighter than a clam. Course, Inez always was tight-lipped. Why, I didn’t find out she’d bought a new washer until she…”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time to try to get Cousin Charlotte off the phone. About as easy as getting honey out of your hair.
“…tell her how you’re holding down poor Inez’s job, gettin’ them letters and all,” Cousin Charlotte said.
That’s what she got for half listening. Cousin Charlotte had switched subjects on her.
“Tell who what?”
“Your mama! When I talk to her tomorrow. Ain’t you been listenin’ to me, Blanche? How’s my Shaquita?” she added. “Tell her her grandma misses her.”
“One last thing, Cousin Charlotte. You know anybody who knows Maurice Samuelson at that Temple?”
“What you want to know ’bout that no-’count negro for?”
Blanche sat up a little straighter. “Why you say that?”
“Well, I don’t want to talk out of turn about a man of the cloth, but…well, you know how some of them ministers are. Keep their brains in their pants and do a lot of thinking, anywhere they can find a spot, if you get my meaning.”
Blanche remembered what Lacey had said about Samuelson’s appetite for young white prostitutes. It sounded like that wasn’t the only Juicy Miss Lucy he hankered for.
“So he likes his poontang, does he?”
“Don’t be nasty-mouthed, Blanche. You know I don’t hold with that, but yes, he surely do. I know a woman used to belong to that Temple of his. Knows something about him before he come here. She got a story to tell, honey.”
“What kinda story?”
“I don’t remember it exactly, except I remember he had a wife and didn’t do right by her.”
Blanche carted out the best lie she could come up with on such short notice. “Well, I got a friend who’s thinking about joining his Temple. I keep telling her there’s something not quite right about the man, but she don’t want to hear it. If she could t
alk to the woman you know, maybe…”
“Call her up! I know for a fact she been warning people to stay away from there. Bea Richards. She’s in the phone book. Over on Handel Street.”
Blanche thanked her, ended the call, and lay back against the pillows, panting and feeling like she’d just finished a wrestling match. Cousin Charlotte was so much like Blanche’s mother, Blanche could feel herself slipping back into childhood, even while she talked her most adult talk. Maybe having to deal with both of them in one day, especially a day when she’d talked back to Mama, was more than she was ready for. She had to look down to make sure she wasn’t wearing a pinafore and Mary Jane shoes.
When she finally did come to rest, she saw Miz Barker sitting in her rocking chair, worrying about who might have hurt Ray-Ray. Poor old dear. Poor old dear. Tears gathered in Blanche’s eyes, but she was grabbed by another thought before they could fall: Why did Miz Barker think Ray-Ray’s death was related to something he had that didn’t belong to him? Of course, Ray-Ray wouldn’t necessarily have had to say anything. Miz Barker had loved Ray-Ray most of his life. She could have known something was up with Ray-Ray the same way Blanche knew when someone she loved was about to arrive or was calling on the phone. Still…She drifted off to sleep before the thought could fully form.
That night, for the first time in a long time, she dreamed of having been raped.
EIGHT
DAY SEVEN—WEDNESDAY
Dawn was just pulling the stars down to sleep when Blanche got Inez’s key from Cousin Charlotte’s kitchen drawer. It was nearly full light when she let herself into Inez’s place.
She never liked being alone in the homes of people she knew. The minute the house sensed she understood it to be a living, breathing, watching creature with a personality and intentions of its own, the house confided in her, directed her attention toward things that told her more about the occupants than she wanted to know. Right now, her eye was being pulled toward a big green armchair with a floral slipcover, a mashed-down seat cushion, and a slightly greasy headrest. An old brass floor lamp stood behind it. Copies of Ebony were stacked on the floor on one side, and a Bible lay open on the table on the other side. Nothing much to see, just Inez’s favorite chair.
She turned her eyes away, but it was too late. From the corner of her left eye she saw a tin can peeking from beneath the chair’s slipcover skirt. Throughout her growing up in North Carolina, Blanche had seen these cans with the labels removed tucked beneath the chairs of older black women—men were bolder with theirs, leaving them in plain sight. She was surprised to find one here. Inez was someone who needed her religion to be hard on her, to forbid her everything but breathing and bathing—no movies, dancing, smoking, drinking, fornicating, idol-worshiping, or ego-tripping allowed. But despite her dedication, it seemed she still took a pinch of snuff and got rid of its juice in the usual down-home way. Blanche put on a pair of rubber gloves and hurried down the hall to the bedrooms before she saw anything else.
There was no question which room had been Ray-Ray’s. Inez’s room was overrun with crucifixes. Ray-Ray’s was just overrun: two large plastic bags like plump slick green pillows in the middle of the floor, boxes of clothes lined up against the walls. All of his clothes seemed to be in boxes—a sign of his packing up to move in with Donnie? The bedside table drawer was jammed with old lottery tickets. Huge barbells guarded the window. Black high-topped sneakers and backless brown leather slippers looked like they had been thrown across the room.
The plastic bags seemed to be filled with throw-away stuff—old newspapers, socks without mates, raggedy, stained jockstraps. She turned to the boxes. The first one was fall of bulky sweaters. Jockey shorts, T-shirts, and socks were in the second box. Folded jeans and a couple pairs of corduroys were in the third one. There was a box of shirts, too. She looked from box to box. Some of the jockeys and tees were tightly rolled; others were half rolled and half folded. Most of the socks were organized in matched pairs; other pairs were separated. The sleeve of a sweater hung over the side of a box. She could almost see someone feeling around in the boxes, lifting the top layers and poking around underneath, making sure nothing was hidden among the clothes.
She went to the window that looked out into Inez’s backyard. It wasn’t quite closed. Outside, there was a cemented yard the size of a hot minute, enclosed by cinder-block walls. Two large blue plastic trash barrels stood against the far wall. There was an outline of a square etched in dirt beside the trash barrels. Blanche stood on her toes. A dark green plastic milk crate stood under the window—just the right size to have made the dirt square. There was also dirt on the windowsill. Somebody had beat her to it. No wonder Ray-Ray’s things looked thrown around. But had they found the tape? She stood very still for a moment. How long ago had someone been here? Could they still be here? She turned to the room, held her breath, and listened. She didn’t hear anything but street noises and didn’t feel anyone else in the house. But she picked up a piece of lead pipe from beside Ray-Ray’s bed and tiptoed from room to room, opening closets, looking under Miz Inez’s bed and behind the sofa, ready to scream, swing, and run, all at the same time. But whoever had broken in was gone, and if the tape had been there, it was probably gone now, too. She wrestled disappointment to the ground and checked her watch. She had over an hour before she was due at the Brindles’. She went back to Ray-Ray’s room to see what else she could see.
One of the big plastic bags brushed against her ankle. Something hard jabbed at her foot. She opened the bag wide enough to see the cardboard box inside. It was larger than a shoe box, but smaller than four shoe boxes. She took it out and set it on the floor. She didn’t expect to find the tape inside, but what about Donnie’s letters and picture? They weren’t in the box either. But she was interested in what she did find: miniature racing cars; birthday cards; four new ties still in their boxes; a pair of child-sized mittens of thick, probably imported, yellow-and-blue wool; ten Christmas cards and one graduation card of the kind you put money in; three get-well cards; six U.S. Savings Bonds; four pairs of new argyle socks; a tightly folded silk robe; an envelope with an invitation to Marc Brindle’s sixteenth birthday party with no name on the envelope. The gift cards had fallen into the bottom of the box, each with “To: Ray-Ray” and “From: the Brindles” written on them.
Ray-Ray’s Brindle stash.
She looked at the other things in the plastic bag: bunches of torn-up bills, old shoelaces, more old lottery tickets, and other junk. So, he’d put his Brindle stuff in the trash. He’d kept some of it for a long time. Why throw it out now?
Was this how Ray-Ray’s big fight with Allister had ended, with Ray-Ray throwing out everything the family had ever given him? But the fight was at least a year ago; would Ray-Ray stay mad that long? And why keep all these gifts this way in the first place? The toy cars didn’t look as though they’d ever touched the floor. The gloves, ties, and socks had never been worn. The money gifts were missing; probably couldn’t afford to horde them. Ray-Ray had just kept it all, like prizes or souvenirs, things too special to be used because of who had given them to him. Ray-Ray had told Blanche that he’d always used the front door, just like one of the family. Is that how he’d thought of himself before the fight that made him want to hurt Allister Brindle? Certainly, growing up listening to Inez talk about the Brindles in a holy tone of voice had made some impression on him. And how powerful it must have felt to a poor little black boy to be able to come and go pretty much as he pleased in a place like that, to be taken to ball games by Allister, as though he were the other son. And then it was over. She closed the box and put it back in the bag. She rose and began opening bureau drawers, looking for the letters and picture Donnie wanted. The drawers were empty except for a smaller one. It was half full of little boxes and packs of matches from clubs and restaurants, mostly from a place called Le Club, but there were no letters or pictures. She hesitated in the doorway.
Ray-Ray’s room was the only one tha
t looked like it had been searched. The tape could be somewhere else in the house. With Miz Inez out of town, Ray-Ray didn’t have to worry about her finding the tape he’d tucked under her mattress—but it wasn’t there, or in the bureau drawers with their cotton snuggies and undershirts, bras and slips bleached nearly blue and neatly folded dark brown panty hose. Blanche went down the hall to the bathroom. The cabinet under the sink smelled of Listerine, Bengay, and Lubriderm lotion and held little else. Miz Inez’s kitchen cabinets were as organized as the ones at the Brindles’. If there was anything in them that shouldn’t have been, Blanche couldn’t find it. She even checked under the lining bag in the trash can. The built-in china closet and the old dark sideboard were full of dishes and cutlery, tablecloths and old magazines. The living room was equally tapeless. Disappointed but not surprised, she locked the front door and hurried to the bus stop. It was time to go to work.
As soon as she got to the Brindle house, Blanche looked up Bea Richards’s phone number and called her. If she was a working woman, which she likely was, she’d be up by now. Blanche only planned to talk long enough to convince Bea to meet her and tell what she knew about Samuelson. But there was no answer.
“This my half day, you know,” Carrie reminded Blanche.
The doorbell rang before Blanche could ask Carrie how she intended to spend it. Carrie and Blanche gave each other who-could-that-be-at-this-hour looks. The Brindles had only just finished breakfast.
“So?” Blanche asked when Carrie came back from answering the door. “And don’t start that Massa’s business ain’t none a my business bull hockey.”
“Weren’t gonna say that noway,” Carrie whispered. “Things is gettin’ wilder and wilder around here. I just showed a private investigator into the library to see the mister and missus—least that’s what his card said.”
Blanche Cleans Up Page 17