All the Finest Girls (6 page)

I handed Lyris the dollars I was clutching and told her to buy her friends each a soda.

“See you later, Auntie!” Lyris cackled over the heads of her schoolmates as I walked away. Her hand, holding my sweaty bills, slipped deftly into the pocket of her skirt.

6

G
ONE TO THE
city,” Dilly says when I ask if my mother is home. We’re coming in the front door from school. Tight black buckle shoes. Third grade. Last night, my father’s words came up hard through the loose planks of the floor, followed by the crunch of gravel and burn of motor from his little red car zipping up the road. After he left, I listened as Mom stacked records in the living room, the click and hiss of each disc moving into orbit. She played her sad music, lonesome melodies with no voices. I never heard her come upstairs. Cat kept at me all night, fussing and taunting. In the morning, a fog lay on the Schroeders’ pasture and everything was hushed.

At the doorway I drop my schoolbooks. I fell asleep at school again, during reading hour, and I’ve a note in my pocket for my mother. But it’s a crumpled, smeary ball now, and I don’t think she could read it even if I gave it to her. So I won’t. Taking it to the trash, I pass the dishes from last night’s dinner, still on the table. A carton of cream is spilled on the counter, and coffee grounds lie like potting soil on the floor.

“I’m going to the bus station,” says Dilly, looking around and pushing back his cap to scratch at his head. “Be good now.”

In the TV room, I turn on the television and wait for the pop of the tube and the voices to kill the big silence around me. I hear Mom’s voice in my head.
When she comes we’ll be at our absolutely best to make her feel at home.
Now I’m looking at the TV screen but I can’t see anything except the wrecked kitchen and a space where my mother should be. Outside, the sun begins to slip behind the top of the hill and Mr. Schroeder’s cows are funneling into their big white barn. I go back to the kitchen and pull a chair up to the sink.

The first spray of the faucet drenches my blouse. I turn the knobs this way and that till the water runs steady and warm. Squeezing the detergent bottle tight between my hands, I watch dreamily as the white liquid makes creamy streams around the saucers and pools inside each cup. I push a sponge around the dishes and let them sit beneath running water.

At the bottom of the sink is a large skillet filled with something stiff and white like mashed potatoes, but not potatoes. I reach into the pan to scoop it clean. The buttery slush cakes on my hands. I run water over them, pull at one with the other, but still my hands don’t come clean. Steadying myself on the edge of the sink, I slip and my hand drops into the basin, breaking a glass. Blood rises in pink swirls from the dirty water. I leave the water running and stand, arms raised, in the center of the room.

Well, it’s an opportunity, really, a film, and the pay is

Oh for God’s sake, Baby, don’t pretend it’s the pay

But it matters to me, it does

A red stream like Peter Coolley’s bloody nose in math class wends its way along the cakey white banks of scum, around my fleshy knuckles.

Anyway, it’s just a meeting. Jerry

Jerry is a parasite

Turns thin when it mixes with the water on my wet wrist and runs in a sheet down my arm.

Jerry said the director asked for me, and I don’t always want to be saying no. Besides, now we’ll have Louise

My heart is racing, racing. My finger throbs, feels hot.

You don’t care what I think. Why are you asking me

I do, I’m

You’re a cunt

Sparks and spangly pictures crowd outside my vision, and the kitchen begins to disappear behind the black spilling around me.

“What’s happened to you, lickle one?”

It’s her. She’s bent over me, wearing a long brown overcoat and a delicate hat. The chain on her glasses swings above my face. Dilly is in the doorway and he’s dropped her bags. In an instant Louise has lifted me by an arm and is shoving my hand beneath the faucet.

“It’s OK. It’s arright,” she says, her voice soft as a bunny’s fur. She’s wiping the waxy clots from my fingers onto her own. “Lemme see. You’re OK. Jes’ a lickle glass. Jes’ a peeny-weeny piece. But yah hand’s so greasy.”

She looks back at Dilly, and then she looks me in the eye and smiles. Gold.

“What yah doing the dishes for? Dat’s not yah job.”

Dr. Goodman has hair like cauliflower. He holds a needle up to the light, so big he could use it to make clothes for a giant. The room is chilly and smells like my father’s favorite drink. I’m sitting on a table covered in paper that crinkles under my legs, and I’m frightened and my finger throbs. Louise holds my good hand in hers. Together they look like chocolate and butter. We left Dilly in the waiting room, twisting his cap.

“Don’t watch,” says Dr. Goodman.

I try to concentrate instead on the zigzags in Louise’s coat.

“Still now.”

I hold my breath. Louise has said it’s all right to cry, but I’ve decided I want to be brave, for her. The first stitch feels like burning water. Louise holds me tight. Zigzag, goes the cloth of her coat. Zigzag. Zigzag. Louise smiles at me. Zigzag. On and on, the burning water on my hand and zigzag. Zigzag.

“That should do it.”

Dr. Goodman is finished. I look at the fatty part of my pointing finger. It’s rusty brown from the medicine the nurse swabbed on, and across it run four black X’s, just like the stitching on the back of my blue jeans. It’s swollen and pulses with heat. The nurse has begun to gently roll gauze around my hand when the door springs open. All in a sweet-smelling rush, Mom appears, waved in I think by an unseen magic wand. Her butterscotch hair is falling from its twist.

“Oh, Snooks!” she cries. When I look at her, her eyes are drowning. They’re swimming with tears and a dark kind of trouble that wakes Cat and frightens me. I turn away from her, toward Louise.

Back at home, Mom rushes about, turning on all the lights till the house glows like a birthday cake. She shows Louise her room and then spreads a picnic on the living-room floor. Everywhere around us are paper parcels from Schwarz and Bonwits and the food shop in the basement of Bloomingdale’s. The kitchen is still a mess.

“It’s grand, just us girls. Right?” Mom says, pouring grape juice into a wineglass for me.

She pushes the plates of salmon and cheese toward Louise and, from time to time, glances toward the front door. The brimmy, drowning look in her eyes hasn’t quite gone away.
I wonder where my Hank is. Addy’s father is wonderful, Louise, an absolute genius. You’ll like him, I’m sure.
Louise drinks water and sits carefully, her legs tucked beneath her.
When I’m away you may have to fill in for me a bit, but he cooks, mostly looks out for himself. Right, Addy?
I lie on the floor and train my new binoculars on Louise’s face. She has a mole like a pencil eraser just above her lip.

When Louise goes to unpack, my mother takes me to bed. She tries to help me undress, but I pull away from her, not wanting to look into her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Snooks. I really am.” She sits on the edge of my bed. “You’re cross with me,” she says softly. “So is your father.”

My pajamas are in a heap on the floor and, feeling cold now, I get into them quickly. On the other side of the wall, I can hear bureau drawers opening and closing. Louise hums a pretty tune. I imagine her moving gently about, floating like a dancer. Mom is crying now, and the sound of it makes me feel sick. Keeping my back to her, I get into bed and snap out the light. I’m achy and tired and want to go away from the day.

“Everything is going to be fine, Addy. I promise,” she says in the darkness. “It’ll all be just fine.”

I listen to the sounds on the other side of the wall and find I cannot keep my eyes open. It is much later, I think, when my father returns home.

Jesus, this place is a fucking pigsty

Please keep your voice down, Hank. I got back late and

Look at this. Look at this!

It’s my fault. I said I’m sorry. The meeting went on

Thank Jerry for me, will you? Tell him I couldn’t be more pleased. Really.

Up rises furry spine. I wait for the scratch of his sandy tongue, for nails on the bedpost, for the long night ahead. But when my father’s voice recedes, I hear only the sound of Louise’s steady breathing, close by. Cat turns and takes his leave.

7

S
EE THAT MOUNTAIN
over there?” Philip said, pointing to a tiny island just off shore. Together, its two uneven hillocks resembled a sleeping woman, her back to us. “It’s called Morne des Serpents. It used to be a volcano. A long time ago a giant boa constrictor, four hundred feet, crawled from the sea and settled at the bottom of the hole.”

We were sitting at a table that had been plunked down in the sand outside a waterfront bar, waiting for word on the Cadillac. My head now cooled, I was just about to apologize for the trouble I’d caused and insist on paying for the damage when Philip began to describe our surroundings. He leaned in close to me, his expression grave.

“She stayed in there and, over the years, had thousands of babies. Twisting and turning on top of each other. Serpent stew.”

My flesh crawled. Philip brought his voice down to a whisper.

“If you’re foolish enough to go up there? Well, my aunt Marva knew a lady who did. If you go up there and look down on them, you die RIGHT ON THE SPOT!”

With the last words he slammed his palm down, making me jump, the uneven legs of the chair pitching me sideways. I hung on to the table to stop myself from falling over. Breaking up with laughter, Philip reached out and helped me right myself, then smacked me on the shoulder. I watched him as he kept laughing, his gangly legs poking up around the sides of the table, and thought he looked about twelve years old, which was around the same age he was acting. Philip, it seemed, had a unique way of making me feel stupid. He was beginning to get on my nerves.

“Don’t worry,” he said, grinning now. “He never bothers with white people.”

“That why you’re still alive?” I asked, unable to check my sarcasm.

Philip tucked his chin back in an attitude of mock indignity.

“Shit, no. I ain’t white. I’z a nee-gro!”

Between our table and the water, a man in dreadlocks and a threadbare UC Berkeley T-shirt squatted on the beach, scaling a pile of fish. He dropped his head, trying to hide his laughter. Until then, I hadn’t known he was listening to us.

I was flummoxed by Philip’s looks. The photos of the boys that Lou had had in her room were small and, as I remembered them, bent and faded. I couldn’t even say for sure, after twenty years, if they were color or black-and-white. Maybe I’d seen only what I’d expected to find.

So what of Lou’s husband, the father of these men? I recalled his name suddenly. Errol.

Errol.

Lou’s voice again, clear as the sound of seawater washing the shore just ahead of us. I closed my eyes for an instant and a figure, entirely in shadow, came to me. That’s all there was. In my mind, Errol had always been a dark man in darkness and nothing more. I knew the boys had a father but — now I wondered why — I had pretended he didn’t exist. For me, there were only women on St. Clair. Women and boys.
Errol.

I turned my attention back to Philip, who was bugging his eyes out at me and grinning like Stepin Fetchit. I had dozens of questions, but I didn’t want to ask any of them. I resolved to keep quiet and ignore Philip’s patronizing. He didn’t seem to notice or care what I was thinking. Finished with his routine, he cuffed me lightly on the arm.

“You sure you don’t want a beer?”

I swirled the ice around in the pulpy bottom of my pineapple juice and shook my head.

“I got the good skin. Like my pappy,” he said, stretching himself and revealing his tanned, hairy stomach.

Philip, it was plain to see, had a beautiful body. I looked away and out at the little whitecaps in the harbor. Three pelicans swooped down, dropped their prehistoric beaks into the water, and took off again. Deeply uncomfortable, I felt compelled to talk.

“Is that why Derek’s so angry?”

“Oh,
Derek
woulda been pissed if he’d been born the Duke of Windsor.”

“So I shouldn’t take it personally.”

“Well, yeah, you probably should. But so what.”

I turned back to Philip, who was smiling warmly at me now. My curiosity was beginning to get the better of me.

“Has he always been like this?” I asked.

He gave my question some thought and shrugged.

“Yeah. No. Probably. I didn’t really grow up with him, so I can’t say for sure. But he wasn’t so mingy, tight like that, when we were real small. He’s suffered a lot of disappointment, my brother.”

“What do you mean you didn’t grow up with him?”

“I grew up with Errol in Eldertown, mostly. With my stepmother, Patrice, till she sent me to school in the States. I never spent much time with my real mumma till the last few years, after Patrice died and a lot of shit started to come down.”

“When did they divorce?” I asked, trying hard now to recall what I knew.

Philip began to laugh again. But this time he wasn’t mocking me. I’d struck a nerve.

“Oh, they weren’t
married,
Errol and Louise! Don’t you know what they say down here? ‘If you’re white, it’s all right; if you’re brown, stick around; but if you’re black, GET BACK!’ ”

“Wait, is your father white?” I asked, incredulous.

Sobering up, Philip leaned on the table and looked down at his arm and mine.

“Nah. Not white. He’s like me.” He ran his finger across my hand. The contrast was great. “He’s not real white, like you.”

Reflexively, I pulled away, and we both turned to look for the waiter. Just then, a man who had helped with the boat came into the bar and told us that the tow truck had arrived. Philip thanked him and proffered a crumpled dollar bill.

“Let’s go see what this Clifton has to say.”