Blanche Cleans Up

by Barbara Neely

  Disappointment dogged Blanche’s steps. It wasn’t right that Samuelson was going to get away with all he’d done to so many people—murder, rape, thuggery, lies, the boy had been at all that, although she was no longer so sure about the first and worst of his crimes. But even without that, Samuelson was guilty of plenty. It wasn’t fair that he should be the religious star in the community when he was really a mangy dog showing signs of rabies. She’d stopped expecting life to be fair when she was about eight years old and had yet to be proven wrong. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to even things out a little bit.

  She stopped at the hardware store and picked up two spray cans of red-orange paint. She also bought herself a pocket-sized container of pepper spray. From now on, she intended to be better prepared for pigs like Mr. Muscles.

  By the time she got home, her head felt swollen with the need to think about all that she’d learned, to figure out what she needed to do. She went up to her room and undressed. She lay on her bed and relaxed her body. As her breathing slowed, she let the picture of Donnie float once again to the center of her mind’s eye. She sighed and willed herself to accept the meaning of what Othello and Pam had told her: Donnie had lied about not having seen Ray-Ray for four days before Ray-Ray died. He’d lied about being afraid Ray-Ray’s killer might come after him. What else had he lied about?

  She shifted back to the evening she’d met Donnie at the bar. What was the remark Lucinda had made about him that night? Something about artists. Maybe it wasn’t a slur against gays, as she’d thought. Maybe it was about Donnie himself.

  She got out the Yellow Pages again.

  The woman who answered the phone at The Steak Shop said Lucinda wasn’t working today. Blanche knew better than to ask for Lucinda’s home phone number, but she tried to get the woman to pass her number on to Lucinda.

  “Can’t,” the woman said. “She outta town. Be in Monday.” She hung up.

  Blanche made herself a cup of tea. Nothing she could do now but wait. She turned on the radio and switched the station from the children’s preferred WILD to WGBH. Blues After Hours was on tonight. She’d ride the music away from here for a little while.

  TWELVE

  DAY ELEVEN—SUNDAY

  Joanie came to fetch Taifa and Shaquita at 8:30 Sunday morning. Othello picked Malik up at nine. None of them would be back before evening. Blanche had planned to go back to bed and sleep another hour or two, but the prospect of a whole day on her own was too exciting to waste on sleep.

  She turned on the radio before she turned on the kitchen light. For once, her station hadn’t been changed. Maybe the children finally accepted that this was her radio, not to be mistaken for family property—just like Grandma tried to teach me. She chuckled to herself, then stared at the radio:

  …His father, Allister Brindle, recently declared his candidacy for governor. The Brindle family is one of the…

  The reporter droned on in his best we’re-so-sorry-to-have-tell-you-this voice saved for the tragedies of the well-to-do and famous. If sympathy for the family was how the press was playing it, there’d be no ambitious junior reporter poking around for the story under the story, and the cops had no reason to ask any more questions. For once, rich folks’ privilege was paying off for her, too.

  The doorbell rang as she was pouring some of the bubbling bath salts Malik had given her for her birthday into the tub. She jerked upright and caught her breath. She knew who it was, just as she always knew when somebody close to her was calling on the phone or ringing her doorbell. But it can’t be! she thought. They hadn’t done any more than exchange birthday cards since he got married. Her mind argued with the hard, pimply flesh at the tips of her breasts and the first hint of a throb between her legs. It couldn’t be, but it was.

  She turned off the water and looked in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. She smoothed her hair, then ran down the hall to her room. Where had she put that condom she took from Malik? She found it in her night table drawer and put it under her pillow. The bell rang a third time. She straightened and retied her robe before she went down to the door. She laid her palm flat against it for a moment, then flung it open.

  “Y-Y-You surprised?” Leo held his hat between those knowing hands. A grin squinted his deep, dark eyes and creased his broad forehead. His stutter, which showed up only when he was really nervous, told her he wasn’t sure of his welcome. She stomped on the urge to run her tongue over his full, red-black lips.

  She stepped back to let him in, then quickly locked and chained the door. She turned to face him. Damn, he looked good! She tried to wipe the lust off her face, although she was sure he’d felt it already. The heat that sprang between them when he passed her in the doorway had nearly singed her hair.

  “What brings you to Boston?”

  “My brother Roscoe’s wife’s mother died. They live over in New York. I was the only one of the brothers who could get up here to the funeral. So…I took the bus here from New York. Nice ride.”

  Blanche felt him searching for something more to say. She didn’t help him out. He was the one who got married.

  “Nice funeral, too. Real nice.”

  Blanche wanted to laugh. She’d never seen him squirm so, like he had to pee or something. She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

  “I thought I’d surprise you. Maybe buy you a drink, or…”

  “You want some coffee? Hot tea? Iced tea? Orange juice? Gin? Water?”

  “Uh, yeah, coffee. Coffee would be good.” He followed her into the kitchen.

  “Nice place you got here.”

  Blanche measured coffee into the coffeemaker and let the silence between them settle into something a little less nervous.

  “Saw your mama last week. Spry as ever.”

  Blanche put cups, cream, and sugar on a tray.

  “Haven’t seen Ardell for a while. Somebody said she’s away. Course you’d know more about that than me.” He gave Blanche a help-me-out kind of look.

  “How about something to eat?” she asked him.

  “Uh, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  There was no argument about that. She carried the tray into the living room and put it on the coffee table. She invited him to sit. He took the sofa. She took the armchair to his left. She poured coffee and handed him a cup. They stared at each other over it until she sat back in her chair.

  “So how’s everything down home?”

  “Fine, just fine. Everybody’s healthy. Weather’s good.” He sipped his coffee. “How’s Taifa and Malik?”

  “Growing fast. What’s up with Luella? How she doing?” Blanche asked, knowing he knew she didn’t give a damn about the answer. She wondered if he also knew she was going to have him even if he said Luella was standing just outside the door. But that didn’t mean she was going to make it easy for him.

  Leo looked everywhere in the room except at Blanche. “She’s okay.”

  “Just okay? That don’t sound like newlywed talk to me. Why didn’t she come with you?”

  Leo squirmed like the sofa was heating up beneath him.

  “Well?”

  Leo’s usually slow, clear voice became a quick mumble: “Seem like she don’t want to be a wife no more than you. Spends all her time in that new church.”

  Blanche threw her head back and laughed.

  Leo leaned forward and set his coffee cup on the table and looked at her as though her name were Cake.

  “Goddammit, Blanche! What you want me to say? Okay, okay, maybe I made a mistake, maybe…” His words were like groans from deep in his gut.

  Blanche unfolded like brand-new butterfly’s wings.

  “Serves you right for quittin’ me.” She crossed her legs and let her robe fall open.

  Leo stood and reached for her. Blanche let him pull her from the chair. “Aw, shit, woman. Don’t nobody ever quit your fine ass.” He cradled the cheeks of her behind with his hands and slid his tongue between her lips, slowly, deliberately exploring her mo
uth. She felt light as laughter. And greedy. She wrapped her arms around his neck. His hand slid between her legs. She yanked his shirt from his pants, lifted it, and moaned at the touch of his velvet chest, the muscles in his back. She pulled away to take off her robe. Leo helped her with one hand while the other stayed between her legs, touching everything she owned and turning it to a hot stickiness. Those magic fingers. Dear Ancestors! This was the sweetest man. She traced a circle around his left nipple with her tongue. They almost didn’t make it to her bedroom.

  He stayed all day, most of it in Blanche’s bed. In the middle of the afternoon they showered and played in the tub until they were both hot enough to sizzle. Blanche didn’t tell him anything about what had been happening, but she leaned into him and let him pet her in ways she could see surprised him and made him happy. She fed him lightly, not wanting to waste his energy on digestion. She rode him like he was the last train away from certain disaster, and lay panting and sweaty next to him, more relaxed and present in her body than she’d been in months, her floor littered with Leo’s condom supply. Laughter rolled up from her belly and rocked the room.

  “Damn! I missed you, woman! Just hearing you laugh, I…” Leo rolled toward her. “Listen, Blanche, I…”

  She put her tongue in his mouth. What was there to say? He was the one who’d gotten married.

  Leo pulled away from her. “So, this is it?”

  “You always was greedy, Leo. That’s what got you Luella.”

  He frowned down at her. “What you mean?” He made small circles around her navel with his index finger.

  “You wanted somebody to own. That’s why you got married. This wasn’t enough, just being happy as two pigs in slop.” She slid her hand along the shaft of his penis. “You had to own a wife. Well,” she laughed, “you got one. And God, too, it sounds like.”

  Leo wanted to talk. “Can’t we work something out?”

  “Something like what?”

  “Something regular, something sweet and…”

  Blanche laid her hand on his cheek. “Leo, honey, you know better.”

  “Blanche, baby, I miss you so much. You don’t know what it’s like. Every time I look at Luella, I know I made a mistake.”

  “Then fix it,” she told him, but softly.

  “That could take awhile. In the meantime…”

  “I haven’t changed, Leo,” She almost wished it weren’t true. “It would be just like before. You don’t know how to do openhanded loving, and I can’t do it any other way.”

  “Aw, Blanche, we…”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “Don’t waste what time we’ve got talking about what we can’t have.” She rolled toward him. There was one last condom on the night table.

  An hour later, she shooed him into a cab, which gave him exactly forty-five minutes to make his bus.

  Blanche was still in her bathrobe when Malik flew into the house.

  “Moms! Guess what?” He threw his backpack on the sofa. “We found the names of two officers in the company that owns the abandoned building. They’re related. Two ladies named Laconia and Murleen Waterford. We don’t know who they are yet, but…”

  “That’s great, honey,” Blanche said from the one corner of her attention not engaged in savoring her day.

  “Man, that computer was awesome! And guess what else? These Waterford people own some other buildings, too, where people are living, and we…Why’re you smiling like that?” Malik asked her.

  “Like what?” Blanche swung her crossed leg.

  “Like that!” He looked at her as though she might have stolen something.

  When Shaquita and Taifa came in, Taifa stood in front of Blanche, where she sat in her favorite chair.

  “Whatsup, Moms!” She leaned over and looked deep into Blanche’s eyes, then stood back with a frown on her face. “Anybody been here?” she asked with a hint of Malik’s suspicion in her voice.

  Blanche laughed, told them there was food in the fridge if they were hungry, and went upstairs to slip her sweetly aching body into yet another tub of warm water.

  She drifted off to sleep with the ease of an otter slipping through water. She dreamed of water, too, of floating on a calm blue sea, bobbing to the rhythm of it breathing beneath her. Then she was standing beside a road. Two women stood nearby. They smiled and spoke to her as if she knew them. The plaid headdresses and old-fashioned long skirts they wore were like those she’d seen on Caribbean women in ads for vacations to Jamaica. Dream Blanche was tired and sweaty and knew that she was waiting for some kind of ride. The two women began applauding as a Model T Ford chugged toward them. Bea Richards was driving. She waved to the two women, then opened the door and beckoned to Blanche, but the car turned into a crumbling building just before Blanche stepped in. Bea barely escaped. The two women threw buckets of water at the dust rising from the falling building. Bea. Water. Ford. Building.

  Blanche’s eyes flew open. Her feet were on the floor before her legs were fully awake. She staggered down the hall to Malik’s room, reached out to shake him, and changed her mind. He needed his rest. She moved his backpack and the Jockey shorts and shirt he’d worn Sunday. The notebook for his environmental paper was on his desk. She stepped out into the hall, where she could see better, and flipped the book open to the last used pages. Excitement made her fingers clumsy. Did she have the right name? The state she’d been in when Malik told her about the owners, who knew what he’d said. But there they were, Laconia and Murleen Waterford, the dead wife and the locked-away, retarded stepdaughter of Maurice Samuelson. They were the named officers of the corporation that owned the abandoned building where lead poisoning may have killed a child.

  THIRTEEN

  DAY TWELVE—MONDAY

  Blanche couldn’t wait for Malik’s alarm to go off. She shook him awake. “I know who owns the abandoned building!”

  Malik rubbed his eyes and blinked at her as though trying to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

  “The officers of the corporation that own the abandoned building are Maurice Samuelson’s dead wife and stepdaughter.”

  “Who?”

  “Maurice Samuelson. Reverend Samuelson.”

  “You mean that creepy minister who was at the meeting?”

  “The very same lowlife.”

  “Moms! Moms!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and bounced on the bed. “You did it, Moms! You did it!” He gave her that you’re-Wonder-Woman look he usually saved for Aminata. Blanche was embarrassed to be so pleased by it.

  “I gotta call Aminata!” He leapt out of bed and rushed to the phone.

  Blanche sat on the side of his bed grinning from Malik’s praise and the deep, gut-warming possibility of having finally gotten something on that so-called minister of God.

  “She wants to talk to you, Mama Blanche!” Malik said after he’d told Aminata the news.

  “Girl, you are something! How’d you find out who they were?”

  Blanche told her about Bea Richards. “But who knows if I’d have remembered hearing their names before if I hadn’t dreamt about them.”

  “Well, I’m gonna try to get up with Computer Teddy, as Othello calls him,” Aminata told her. “We need a marriage certificate or something to tie the Waterford women to Samuelson.”

  “I guess Laconia could have started the corporation and bought the buildings without Samuelson knowing anything about it.” Blanche thought this as likely as a flying footstool, but they had to be sure.

  “Un-huh. And maybe I’m really the queen of the Nile,” Aminata said. “I never did trust that man! I’m betting it’s the other way around. I’m betting Samuelson didn’t even start the corporation until after Laconia was dead. I’d like to know what else his corporation owns besides buildings that probably have phony deleading certificates. I’m checking that out. I got a feeling it ain’t just buildings he’s hiding behind that woman’s name. And what about the stepdaughter? Where’s she, I wonder.”

  Blanche told her what Be
a had said about Samuelson putting Murleen in an institution.

  “I bet she don’t know she’s an officer in some corporation. That man really oughtta be ashamed of hisself!”

  If only, Blanche thought. “You really think your computer friend can find a marriage certificate for them?” Blanche’s doubt was as clear as her words. “They probably got married down in Delaware. Did I tell you that?”

  “It don’t matter. Teddy’s one of them information junkies. Hooked into everything. That’s all he does, all he talks about. And they got everything on that Internet, girl,” Aminata said. “Keep your fingers crossed. If we find what we need, we’ll call a community meeting for Thursday night. Turn this sucker over to the ’hood first, to the people whose kids he poisoned. Then we go to the authorities. The rotten bastard.”

  Almost as soon as Blanche had waved the children off to school, Malik ran back to tell her Cousin Charlotte had called while she was in the tub last night. “She’ll be back on Wednesday.” He dashed back out the door.

  Blanche moaned and wished she didn’t have to deal with Cousin Charlotte’s reaction to Shaquita’s pregnancy. And what about Miz Inez? Blanche didn’t want to be the one to tell her the truth about how Ray-Ray had died. There was only so much bad news she was prepared to deliver.

  She waited until nearly noon before she walked down to Dudley Square and around the corner to The Steak Shop.

  The shop was small and narrow: a counter running along one wall, three tables with cracked Formica tops and four wooden chairs each. The grill was behind the counter. The place smelled of cigarettes and burnt grease smoke mixed with the scent of cooking meat. The large front window was so cloudy, the outside world seemed lost in fog. Lucinda was wiping the counter, her head cocked hard to the side to avoid the smoke curling up from the cigarette in the side of her mouth. There was no one else in the place.

  “Hey, Lucinda, how you doin’?” Blanche took a seat in front of her.

  “Nothin’ to it, Blanche. What can I get you? We just got some fresh cold cuts; I could make you a real decent hoagie.”