Not really, but you didn’t argue with a woman like Ellen. “You’ve always been fair.” Glory edged toward her door, wanting the conversation to end. “I’m sorry about the rent. I’ll pay you soon as I can.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t just go home to Roseville. Let your mother take you in. Doesn’t she want to see her grandbabies?”
Glory teared up at the thought of home. Her little room under the eaves of the attic had seemed like a jail when she was in high school, but now Glory longed to climb into the lumpy twin bed and close her eyes. She would slide under the worn quilt that smelled of Downy and sleep for days.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Glory couldn’t bring her children back to Roseville, not without them attracting curiosity and disapproval, even from their own grandmother.
Besides, the little attic room was lost to her, home to some other teenage kid or a storage space to house Christmas decorations and snowboards. Katherine Halpern had sold the old house and gotten a new place with Ray. “It’s very freeing to downscale,” her mom had insisted during one of their rare phone conversations. “And I had to get out of that neighborhood. People never forgave us for what you did.”
The unforgivable—falling in love with a black man.
Glory still prickled at the existence of racism in this day and age. And from people who had been her coaches, her Sunday school teachers, and scout leaders. Even her minister had counseled her to end her relationship with Winston because she should “stick with her own kind.”
There was no going back to Roseville.
No going back to her mother, whose prejudice and fury had surprised Glory the most. Katherine Halpern had raised her daughter to be a good Christian, to be kind to people and help the needy. To “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Every night Glory had knelt on the attic floor, leaning into her bed to say her prayers, just as her mom had taught her. She’d thought her mom truly believed everything she preached.
Then came the day that Katherine had come home in a bad mood. “I had a rotten day at work, and it started when Nella Miller told me that you’re dating a black boy. Everyone was looking at me, as if you’d been locked up by the cops. I told her she was mistaken, that my daughter would never take up with a black person.”
“Mom, just calm down, okay? His name is Winston Noland, and I’m not doing anything wrong. He’s a really nice guy, Mom. A good student, and he plays on the football team.”
The fury that flashed over her mom’s face made Glory’s pulse race in fear. “I don’t care if he’s president of the United States. You’re not going off with some black man.”
Glory couldn’t believe her mother was acting this way, so smug and bigoted. “I’m not going off anywhere,” she had responded in a low, controlled voice. “I’m just going to hang out with my boyfriend.”
Malice flashed in her mother’s blue eyes as she lifted her hand and slapped Glory’s cheek. Stunned, Glory pressed a hand to her cheek, though the sting of humiliation burned Glory more than the actual pain. Disapproval cut deep, but shoves and pinches emphasized a point.
Coming back to the moment, Glory looked up at her landlady, realizing the woman was waiting for a response.
“See that?” Ellen jabbed a finger in the air, having mistaken Glory’s hesitance for agreement. “I’ve hit on a good idea. If you take those babies back to see your mother, she’ll take you in. There isn’t a woman on earth who can turn her own child away.”
“You haven’t met my mother.” Glory stepped into the shadows of the vestibule to hide her thoughts. There had been a time, back when Ruby was a newborn so many moons ago, when Katherine would have held the door open as Glory carried her first baby inside. Glory would have paused for her to catch a breathless glimpse of Ruby’s sweet baby face, and maybe that moment would have sparked a care inside her, a pang that ran deeper and swifter than the currents of disapproval from the neighbors or the ladies in the church choir.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Glory liked to think that it wasn’t cruelty in her mother’s soul, just cruel behavior. A fingernail pinch. A stinging slap on the cheek.
Not for her babies.
She and Winston were going to raise their kids on love— that was the dream. Holding on to the dream. A poet himself, Winston had captured Glory’s attention when he rapped Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” in the high school talent show as if it were the coolest lyric ever created. He once quoted a Langston Hughes poem on a birthday card, that poem about clinging to your dreams or else you’d be a wounded bird who couldn’t fly. “Hold fast to dreams . . .” Glory wasn’t giving up on their dreams just because they had hit the tough stage, Winston working on an oil rig up in Alaska and her being a single parent caring for two little ones. This bitter trial would make the good times together that much sweeter.
“Make sure you take care of that pot in the morning.” Ellen’s voice pulled Glory back to the here and now. “If you can’t move in with your mother, you’d better get looking for another place.” The landlady’s mouth was a grim line as she pulled the outer door closed and threw the bolt. “Because you can’t stay here.”
Fear spiked the exhaustion that she was always trying to keep at bay. Ellen didn’t mean that; Glory knew the woman had a heart beneath her splintered exterior. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“You bet,” Ellen said, making a threat and a promise.
Glory clasped the doorknob of her apartment and leaned her cheek against the wood door. Ellen would be kinder in the morning. Everything would be better in the morning . . . if Glory got some sleep.
Summoning the energy to move with a deep breath, she closed the door and tiptoed to her dark bedroom, stripping her clothes off along the way. A movement in the dark told her that Ruby had climbed into Glory’s bed and was awake.
“What was that noise?”
“The smoke detector, but it’s fine now.” Glory kept her voice at a whisper, though that suddenly seemed ridiculous. If Aurora hadn’t been awakened by the blasting alarm, a quiet conversation shouldn’t bother her. The baby was due to nurse in an hour or so. One hour. Glory needed at least an hour; her body craved the dark cocoon of sleep.
Something stiff jabbed at her midriff as she reached toward Ruby in bed. A book, Ruby’s favorite, Harold and the Purple Crayon.
“That’s my book, Mommy.”
“I see.”
“I was reading.”
“That’s good.” Glory stroked the tight dark curls away from Ruby’s face as she nestled in beside her and fell off into sleep.
CHAPTER 4
Winston Noland sensed heads turning as he made his way through the Fairbanks electronics store. Nearly a million people in the state of Alaska, but barely 4 percent of them were African-American. Which made him a novelty wherever he went. A scary, menacing novelty.
Don’t worry, folks, he wanted to announce with a cool smile for the curious mom in tight jeans and a hockey jersey and her two kids, whom she pulled closer. I’m not holding up the store. Just buying a cell phone. You can put your eyeballs back in their sockets.
The hockey mom plucked a credit card from her wallet with shiny red nails that somehow reminded Winston of home. Glory was into that stuff, changing colors at least once a week. She had perfect hands, small but strong, and she always, always wore her wedding ring. He liked that she let people know she was his. He’d been damn lucky to fall in love with a beauty who loved him back.
As the woman mindlessly placed items on the counter her daughter stared up at him. The DVD of a Disney movie. Some HDMI cords. Her brother helped the mom lift the small box fan from the cart.
Winston could use one of those for the room he was renting in the back of the Cougar Saloon. Nights had been cool, but a fan could divert the smell of cigarette smoke and sour beer that seeped in from the bar in the old log cabin building. Still, it was lodging. Better than some had up here. Better than sleeping in his car, which he�
��d done the first night of the job in Livengood. With a population of thirteen, now fourteen, with him staying in the saloon, Livengood was barely a blip on the Old State Highway 2 as you drove north from Fairbanks. Most places wouldn’t list a place that small on maps, but in the interior of Alaska if two guys with a dogsled camped out for the night it seemed to be enough to name the spot and call it a town.
Winston glanced back at the man in line behind him and saw the two revolvers riding his hips, hanging low on a belt like a gunslinger. That was some Wild West gangsta shit. People in Oregon didn’t show off guns in stores, but then Winston was a long way from home. And this was the civilized part of the wilderness in Fairbanks proper. He’d driven down here at first light to deposit his paycheck and replace his cell phone, which had died when it flopped into a puddle on the job site. There were no banks in Livengood, but now, with his check deposited, Glory would be able to have some cash. And once he activated this cellular device, he would finally be able to talk with her. Five days of silence seemed like forever in this beautiful empty scrub country.
“Will that be all?” the cashier said by rote, staring down as she scanned the cell phone’s box. Without waiting for an answer, she told him the price.
Winston took his credit card from his wallet and inserted it in the chip reader. The machine processed it, then flashed “Approved.” As he removed the card, the cashier held out her hand. “Can I see that? And two other pieces of ID, please.”
The hockey mom in front of him hadn’t shown any ID to use her credit card. Whatever. He handed the cashier his Oregon driver’s license and his bank card, and she studied them with skepticism, her nose wrinkling. “Oregon,” she said in disgust.
“Yes, ma’am.” She was a teen, too young to be a ma’am, but he had learned that quiet respect could expedite things. He waited, annoyed that she was keeping him from getting the phone charged, his data switched over, so that he could call Glory. She was going to be pissed at him. On fire. But he didn’t have many options, stuck on the job up in Livengood, with the closest store an hour and a half away. Working twelve-hour shifts, he wasn’t going to risk that drive till his day off.
Trying my best, Morning Glory, he thought. All for you and the girls.
One night he’d been about to ask the saloon owner Bear to let him use the saloon’s landline, but the big guy was quiet and weird, with a wandering eye that made Winston feel like Bear was watching him. No, better not to push the guy who’d relented on giving him a room that wasn’t a legal rental. If Bear snapped, Winston would be without a bed and looking for another job in a few days. He knew when not to push.
“Mm-kay,” said the cashier, finally handing back the ID cards.
He signed the receipt, then forced himself not to dash to the car, knowing that a black man on the run might alarm some people. At the door he paused to keep it open for an older man walking with a cane. His mother had been gone a decade, but she’d been diligent about instilling manners in him when he was a kid. “It’s one of the things I love about you—that you’re polite and kind to people,” Glory used to say back in high school. “Actions reveal a person, and you’ve got a kind and generous heart.”
She gave him more credit than he deserved, but that was “Gullible Glory,” always looking for the good in people. Sometimes she was naïve that way. Like when they first met on the football field that hot August night before junior year. She’d been on a practice field working out stunts with the cheerleading squad, and he’d been at the fifty-yard line going through the paces for the offensive line coach, a prick of a man who hated his weak players and detested his token black running back. It had been a hot Oregon day, with blue sky and a raging sun that made the grass sweat. Coach Legion had worked the offense hard, then dismissed everyone but a handful of players: the sophomores and bench warmers. And Winston.
“Form a circle!” Coach called, pushing back his trucker’s cap. “That’s right, boys. We’re going to play a little game called Pit Drill. Noland, you git in the middle. That’s right. Noland’s in the pit, and you boys are gonna take him down.”
Winston couldn’t believe it as the other players gathered around him. Racist much? Besides, the drill had been banned a few years ago. Too many hits. Too many concussions.
Winston pushed out his mouthpiece, trying to maintain respect. “Coach. This drill’s dangerous. How about we run some laps?” While a few laps might make them all lose their lunches in this heat, anything would be better than this.
“Are you actually crossing me, Noland? Do you think your opinion matters? Or are you just too tired to practice?”
“Sir, I’m just saying that—”
“Noland here wants to be a running back.” Coach Legion pointed at Winston. “He’s gonna have to learn how to take some hits. Show me what you got, boys.”
A tense stillness overtook the field as the coach backed away and the players sized up Winston. This was bullshit. Stupid for all of them to chance getting hurt. There were enough risks in football without doing a stupid practice drill that upped the odds of turning your brain to jelly. But the air was thick with fear and challenge—the coach’s challenge. Try it and you might be a hero. Say no and you’ll ride the bench for the season.
Winston put his mouth guard in, lowered his chin defensively, and braced for attack. The first two hits were okay, shoulder-to-shoulder practice tackles.
But the third man, Drew Kelso, came in like a Mack truck. Helmets smacked together, and Winston saw stars. “Easy, Kelso,” he muttered over the block of mouthpiece. “It’s just a practice.”
Kelso reared back with a snort, his eyes cold, soulless beads under the curve of his helmet. “Shut the hell up.” Kelso lunged at Winston again.
This time the thunder of helmets knocked Winston off his feet and into blackness.
Sweet rest.
He woke up to Glory: eyes as blue as the summer sky and a pale face with a few freckles on her nose that made her look like a kid. Most white girls didn’t get this close to him. But she was scared . . . a sense of alert buzzed around them.
“Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah. I’m just . . . just dizzy.”
“He’s awake!” she called to someone. “We were worried about you. We were practicing over there when you went down.” She touched his arm, her cool palm pressing the biceps under his shoulder pads. She cared; he could feel that.
He started to get up but realized he was on a stretcher in the parking lot. “What happened?”
“You were out. Another player crashed into you, and you were unconscious. The coach said to leave you, that you would wake up, but I couldn’t.” She leaned close to him, her eyes slivers. “That coach is an asshole.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, girl,” he said.
“My name’s Glory.”
She wasn’t a diva, but there was something sexy and fresh about her. Those pink lips and blue eyes in a heart-shaped face . . . She was real, not one of those fixed-up girls with hairpieces and layers of makeup. She had shiny dark hair, long, curvy legs, and a smile that made people smile back.
“Juicy lips and eyes so blue, baby, you know that I love you,” he sang the stupid song under his breath as he finished changing the data over to the new phone. Finally, with the new cell plugged into the running car, he could access his information. Twenty-three missed calls from Glory. He felt like a dick, but it couldn’t be helped.
When he called her cell, she picked up on the first ring.
“Glory, babe, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh my God, Winston! Win!” Her voice was crystal clear; it was hard to believe she wasn’t a few blocks away instead of two thousand miles. “I’ve been sick about you. Where the hell have you been?”
“Sorry, babe. My phone died, and I couldn’t get away from work till now to get a new one.”
“Work? Where are you working that you can’t take a break?”
“I get breaks, but just not enough time to ma
ke it to town. The job’s in Livengood. Only it’s not so good. A one-saloon town almost two hours north of Fairbanks. The only thing it’s got going for it is the pipeline runs there, so there’s a few jobs. I got me a summer position as a pipeliner. The boss says he’ll see how that goes, maybe extend me through the winter.”
“That’s good, right? A pipeliner. That’s great. It could be a long-term thing. The girls and I could come up and join you.”
“We’ll see. Not sure how I feel about bringing you and the girls just south of the Arctic Circle in the wintertime. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and they say it gets only worse in winter. It’s no place for the girls, and you would be bored.”
“Not like I got a lot going on here. But I’m so relieved you’re okay. I was freaking out, Win. You’re killing me, here.”
“I know. You’ve got your hands full, but I’m trying up here. I just couldn’t leave the job till my day off, and there’s no phone stores out on the tundra. They’re working me like a dog, but the pay is good. Gotta look at the positive.”
“I get it.” She sounded tired now, her voice wavering. “At least you’re all right.”
“And we got money. More than a thousand bucks in the account.”
“Woo-hoo. I guess I can pay Ellen. She’s been bugging me.”
“Give her one month’s rent for now,” he said. “There’s going to be a bill for the new cell on the credit card. But that’ll come in next month. If I keep pulling in a grand a week, we’ll get ahead again.” He scanned the parking lot, just to make sure no one was alarmed that he was sitting in the car, talking. “How’s my girls? Put Ruby-doo on for me.”
“She’s still asleep, Win. So’s Aurora.”
“Did I wake you up?”
“Sort of, but that doesn’t matter. I miss you so much.”
“Yeah, it sucks here without you. How about we do FaceTime when I get back to Livengood? I want to get a look at Miss Ruby. I feel like she’s growing up without me, and Aurora, I’ve never been in the same room with her. That’s just wrong.”
The Sisters Page 3