Blanche Cleans Up

by Barbara Neely

  Joanie, Aminata, and Lacey had all heard about Marc on the noon news and were at Blanche’s house when she got home. Aminata and Joanie took the kids. They’d spent the night next door. Lacey had made Blanche a pot of ginger tea with more rum and honey in it than ginger. She’d let Blanche tell the story of what she’d seen over and over again until Blanche’s shoulders began to droop. Then she’d given Blanche the best back rub she’d ever had, and put her to bed.

  Should have had a couple more cups of Lacey’s tea, she thought. The clock by her bed said 2:30 a.m. Middle-of-the-night stillness lay over the house and neighborhood. She was alone in the quiet night—a situation that usually soothed her. But right now, the desire to be held, to be hugged in strong arms until she no longer felt bruised by what she’d seen was a full-body ache. Don’t go there, girlfriend, she told herself. Like Mama says, you didn’t come into this world holding hands with nobody. Still. She rolled over on her side, drew her knees toward her chest, wrapped her arms around her body, and rocked herself back into sleep.

  The phone woke her at 7:00 a.m. She recognized Sadowski’s voice but pretended not to remember immediately who he was. “Oh yeah, Allister Brindle’s boy,” she said.

  Sadowski took a deep breath but held whatever he’d wanted to say in favor of telling her why he’d called. “The Brindles are closing the house for a while. They’re really…”

  She listened to his stiff little speech about the Brindles’ pain and grief and need for complete rest and solitude.

  “Your check will be in the mail this morning, and Mrs. Brindle will be in touch with Inez.”

  When he was finished talking, Blanche hung up without another word. Talking to Sadowski was one less nasty thing she had to do in this life. But that didn’t mean the Brindles were gone from her mind.

  She now knew who had killed Saxe and what part Felicia had played in his death. She knew that Marc, not Ray-Ray, had Allister’s tape; she wondered if Allister had found the tape among his son’s things. She hoped he’d remember to tell Samuelson the tape hunt was off, or at least off her, before he and Felicia left town. The thought of Felicia triggered the sound of her scream echoing through the Brindle house and the smell of blood and the noise and the way Marc’s body had fallen so slowly to the floor. She knew she needed a good cry; her eyes stung, but no tears fell. She considered getting up, saw herself in the bathroom brushing her teeth, taking a shower. The thought of so much effort made her drowsy. She snuggled back into bed.

  It was ten-thirty when the phone called her out of sleep once again.

  “Is that you, Blanche?” It was Mick.

  “I guess so.”

  “You were there when Marc did it, weren’t you?”

  Blanche said she’d been there, but didn’t say that she’d seen it.

  “You okay? It’s a terrible shock to have something like that happen, Blanche. If you don’t feel up to the funeral, Pam’ll understand.”

  Miz Barker’s funeral! She’d forgotten! She threw back the covers. She’d have to get Taifa and Malik organized to at least go to the viewing. Shaquita was baby-sitting for the Mortons, so she was out. Blanche remembered buying apples the other day—too many for the kids to have eaten them all already. The funeral wasn’t until three. She had time to put together a couple of pies.

  “I’m going,” she told Mick.

  “Moms?” Taifa tapped on the door. Malik was right behind her.

  “You okay, Mama Blanche?” Taifa put her arms around Blanche and held her. Malik stretched his arms across both their shoulders. She leaned into the hug and let them warm and soothe her.

  “Tell us what happened, exactly,” Taifa said. “Was there a whole lotta blood and stuff?” Taifa’s eyes were all curiosity.

  “Oh, Ife, I can’t even tell you how awful it was. One second he was standing there screaming at his parents and the next second he was…”

  Once again, she saw Marc Brindle’s head blow apart.

  “Wasn’t nothin’ you could do, Moms. Don’t feel bad,” Taifa said.

  Blanche stared at Taifa and wondered how she knew. Even though it was in her mind, Blanche was only this moment letting herself look at the question of whether she could have flung open the door, lunged for Marc, screamed, done anything that would have made a difference.

  “Yeah,” Malik added. “You know how you are, Mama Blanche. If there was anything you could have done, you would have.”

  The tears nearly leapt from Blanche’s eyes. She sank to the side of her bed and buried her face in her hands. She cried for all that had happened: Miz Barker’s and Ray-Ray’s deaths, Pam’s and Inez’s grief, Shaquita’s pregnancy and the pain it was going to cause Cousin Charlotte, the shock of Marc’s suicide, Samuelson’s attack on her, the fear that the need for guards had put in the children’s eyes.

  Taifa and Malik sat on either side of her and held her, patted and murmured to her in just the way Blanche had done to them over the years.

  “Oh Lord! I feel so much better.” She blew her nose on the tissues Malik handed her.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking from one to the other.

  Taifa shrugged. “It’s a family thing.”

  Blanche didn’t think she could take any more. She sent them to wash and change, which meant a fight about who got to shower first until Blanche made them flip for it.

  The sun drew her to the bedroom window. The Accord was in the parking lot. She went to the phone to call Othello, but realized she’d better make another call first.

  “Temple of Divine Enlightenment.”

  Blanche asked for Samuelson—remembering to put the “Reverend” in front of his name. She was tempted to lie about her own name when asked; Samuelson might not be willing to talk to her. But he was.

  “My sister.” The oil was back in his voice.

  “If the way you treated me the other night is how you treat your sister, I’m glad we don’t have the same mama.”

  Samuelson went so silent, she began to think the line was dead.

  “All right, all right. A misunderstanding.” He didn’t sound like he meant it.

  “So Brindle told you his son had the tape.”

  “He told me.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Apologize,” she demanded.

  The line really went dead this time. Bastard! But at least she’d found out what she needed to know. She called Othello.

  “It’s funny you should call,” he said. “I was planning to call you.”

  Blanche told him about Marc and the tape and her call to Samuelson.

  “So I’m off Samuelson’s list,” she told him.

  “Yeah, well, the good reverend still needs to be dealt with. He can’t be goin’ around jacking people up like he’s the king of the community.”

  “I just wish there was some way to find out what Brindle has on him. I swear I’d spread it all over town!” Blanche said.

  “Yeah, you mentioned that.”

  Blanche liked his thinking-about-what-to-do-about-it tone.

  “I’ll be hanging out with your son tomorrow, you know. Him and Aminata.”

  He said Aminata’s name as though it were sugar on his tongue. Lucky Aminata, Blanche thought. I will not hate her!

  “Doing what?” she asked without a hint that she was trying to put out an invisible green fire.

  “Driving them to a friend’s house out in Framingham. He thinks he can help them find out who’s behind the company that owns that abandoned building.”

  “Oh yeah, the Internet thing.” Blanche half remembered Malik talking about it.

  “Aminata says your boy is really hyped. Good to see a kid his age interested in the environment. You gotta be proud.”

  “I keep my fingers crossed,” she told him, and knew he understood.

  “That’s all you can do after you’ve done the rest,” he said.

  They were about to hang up when Blanche said, “Why were you going to call me, Othello?”


  “Remember what you told me about somebody being with the brother who drowned at the pool? I had one of the our members ask around. You were right. There was somebody with him, an older guy, is what we were told.”

  “What do you mean, ‘older’?”

  “There’s a woman lives on Washington Street, near the pool. She says she knew Ray-Ray from when she used to go to the same church his mom goes to. She said she saw him and another man heading for the pool the night he died.”

  “Somebody she knew?”

  “She couldn’t see the other dude’s face, but she said she knew he was old by the way he was dressed. ‘Old-timey,’ she said.”

  Blanche’s stomach rolled over twice. “What did you say?” she asked as a picture of Donnie in his old-fashioned, long, square-cut jacket and baggy pants formed in her mind.

  “An older dude,” Othello told her.

  “No, about his clothes.”

  “An old dude in old dude’s clothes,” he said.

  Blanche opened her mouth to tell him what she was thinking, but what if she was wrong? This was something she wanted to be very sure about. Donnie wasn’t the only one who wore vintage clothes. The picture of Donnie in her mind began to fade, like a photo left too long in the sun—but its shadow remained.

  “We’ll keep checking around,” Othello said. “Maybe somebody else saw him, too. Somebody who recognized him.”

  “I really appreciate all your help, Othello. I won’t forget it.” She made a mental note to give the Ex-Cons a goodly chunk of her income tax refund—the next piece of money she expected to have.

  She told herself she had too much to do to get hung up on her conversation with Othello. She tuned the radio to WBUR and listened to Car Talk. She didn’t have a car or want one, but the show was always good for a laugh. She rushed together a couple apple-raisin pies, showered and dressed in her gray, brown, and tan funeral-going dress and the gray-and-brown low-heeled shoes she’d found on sale in Filene’s Basement. She wrote Shaquita a note saying where they’d all gone, and was ready when Mick rang her doorbell.

  The kids rushed outside to admire Mick’s Jeep Cherokee—an insult to Native Americans and to people whose legs weren’t long enough to take a giant step up into the damned thing.

  Blanche couldn’t take her eyes off Mick. The combat-booted, very butch lesbian she’d been talking to for the last week or so was now decked out in a navy blue pin-striped suit with a straight skirt, a white blouse with a ruffle down the front, and navy blue pumps with matching handbag. Blue-and-white earrings dotted her ears.

  “Who you pretendin’ to be?” Blanche joked without thinking, then checked Mick’s face to see if she’d offended her.

  Mick laughed. “That’s just what my girlfriend said.” She kicked off her shoes.

  “How do women walk all day in these damned things!” She plopped on the sofa, legs as sprawled as her skirt would allow.

  “Why wear ’em? Or any of it?” Blanche gestured at Mick’s shoes and outfit.

  “It’s easier this way,” Mick told her. “You know what black folks are.”

  “I ain’t black folk?”

  Mick pushed up her glasses. “You know what I mean, Blanche. It’s hard being an out lesbian in the ’hood. That’s why I moved. I grew up around here, remember? And I caught hell.”

  Blanche knew about catching community hell from the many, many times she’d been wounded by blacks for being too black. She remembered when she would have done anything to make the teasing stop, to turn herself into a mid-range brown girl instead of being out on the extreme edge of blackness. As a girl, she’d even tried rubbing her body with lemon juice because she’d heard somebody say it would lighten your skin. How old had she been when she’d learned to treasure her blackness in a way that made other people’s negative comments about it sound just plain crazy? How many times would Mick have to put on this getup before she realized it wasn’t worth it?

  “You got a lot of faith in clothes makin’ the woman, honey,” she told Mick.

  Mick lowered her head and smoothed her skirt. “It’s a kind of respect thing, too. For Miz Barker, I mean. She never said she approved of me, but she acted like she did, even though she used to tease me about looking like a lumberjack. So, I figured this one time…” Mick trailed off.

  Blanche remained silent, waiting for Mick to acknowledge that her last reason was not as important as her first.

  “It’s stupid. You’re right. But God! It just rips my guts out when black people look at me like I’m evil or dirty. Like I don’t belong here. Or anywhere.”

  Blanche wished she could tell Mick she was wrong, that no black person had anything against lesbians or gay men, but she knew Mick was right. She’d once heard a black historian say that hatred of homosexuals was taught to African slaves because slave babies could only be made by female-male couples. Somebody ought to tell gay-hating blacks that slavery was over and loving was about more than baby-making.

  They stopped by Miz Barker’s house to drop off Blanche’s pies and the ham Mick had baked. The kitchen was under the control of a quartet of women Blanche thought of as part of The Regulars—the women in the community who always helped the sick, made sure all the food a grieving family could use was prepared and presented, made sure their street was kept clean. They were the women she always thought of when she heard some right-wing jackass—black or white—going on about how black people needed to do for themselves instead of blah, blah, blah. If we didn’t do for ourselves, she thought, we’d all be dead by now.

  The viewing and funeral were at Roland’s Funeral Parlor on Columbus Avenue. People were going in and coming out as Mick cruised the block for a parking space.

  Pam and other members of the family sat to the left of the coffin. Blanche went straight to the front and hugged Pam.

  “We’re very sorry about your grandmother,” Malik told her as he shook her hand.

  Taifa nodded her head. “She was a good person,” she added.

  Blanche looked from Malik to Taifa, pleased with them.

  Mick added her condolences, and they all shook hands with Miz Barker’s son and his wife, Miz Barker’s sister, who sat in a wheelchair looking confused, and Pam’s mother, who presided over cousins, grandkids, and great-grandkids swelling the ranks of family mourners.

  What was left of Miz Barker looked like no one Blanche had ever known. In death she seemed to have shrunk to the size of a wizened child in adult clothing, her skin stretched across her face like a rubber mask. She was laid out in a gunmetal-gray coffin filled with a foamy white lining like frozen shaving cream.

  After a minute or so, Blanche walked Malik and Taifa to the door. She’d told them before they left home that there was no more need for the Ex-Cons, so they were eager to be on their own. But first Blanche made sure they’d done their homework.

  They’d be out all day tomorrow, Malik with Aminata and Othello, and Taifa and Shaquita on a mall trip with Joanie to New Hampshire sponsored by Rudigere Homes, during which Taifa expected to sell a lot of candy.

  “There’s ground turkey for burgers in the fridge and leftover chili,” Blanche told them. “Taifa, do you have exact change for the bus? You remember the last time you—”

  “Chill, Moms, chill. I got it covered.”

  Blanche looked from one to the other. “Don’t get into no foolishness on the bus. Like I told you, act like—”

  “Mom, we ride the bus all the time. We’re not babies.” Malik laid his hand on her arm as though he were trying to calm a fretful child. They both kissed her on the cheek. She had the distinct feeling they felt sorry for her.

  She took a seat in the last row of folding chairs. She believed a funeral was the place to leave your sorrow and pain piled around the coffin like so many baskets of flowers and walk away ready to be healed, if you could. But she’d already shed most of her misery when she’d cried into the children’s arms. Even so, she felt the gathering tide of grief—as though all the peop
le in the room had pooled their heartache over Miz Barker’s death and whatever else they needed to cry and moan about. She felt it in herself, too, a kind of opening up on the inside, like moving closer to the people around her without moving at all.

  A young man rose and went to the podium in the corner of the room opposite the coffin.

  “My name is Calvin Barker. I want to thank you…”

  Blanche judged him to be a great-grandson.

  It seemed everybody—including Blanche—and every business in the neighborhood had sent a card or telegram to the family, all of which Calvin was reading. Particularly touching messages got a loud “Umm-humm” from the mourners. Each time it happened, Blanche felt the grief tide rise a little higher.

  When the cards were read, Calvin asked people to come to the podium if they had anything they wanted to say about Miz Barker. Most people stood and spoke from their seats about what a good neighbor and friend Miz Barker had been. Finally, a young woman rose from her seat and went to the podium.

  “My own mother put me out after her boyfriend raped me. This woman”—she pointed at Miz Barker’s coffin—“took me in.”

  “Praise Jesus! She was a good soul,” someone called out.

  The young woman went on: “She helped me to understand that what had happened was not my fault. She helped me get my life back together and encouraged me to keep on moving on.”

  “Amen, child, amen,” a mourner replied.

  “I am here to praise her and to thank her. To tell the world that there was no more decent human being in the world, God rest her soul.”

  “Tell it, child!”

  The current swelled as the young woman stopped talking and began to sing “Nearer My God to Thee,” punctuated by sobs from members of the family. The room was swamped by a wave of grief. Tears flowed, family members hugged, and other mourners clasped hands as they were all washed in one another’s sorrows and released from them in a way that was easy and sweet and hard as birthing. Just as Blanche thought she would drown in so much feeling, a small child asked, “Momma, is that lady gonna sing another song?” and dried their eyes with laughter.