The House on Harbor Hill

by Shelly Stratton

  My eyes are closed when I step through the door into the laundry room. The tears come by the time I reach the sink basin where I scrubbed off the bottom of Mr. Williams’s golf cleats yesterday.

  The ache in my chest is worse now. It is a sharp pain, like someone has stabbed a knife inside me and is twisting it. I can barely breathe. I’m gulping for air as I choke back my sobs.

  “Where’s the fire, honey? The party isn’t that bad, is it?” a deep voice drawls behind me.

  I whip around. I can’t see well because the lights are off, and only moonlight filters through the opened window blind. I squint and find a shadowy figure sitting on the counter along the adjoining wall where we usually fold laundry.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, quickly wiping the tears off my cheeks and the snot from my nose with the back of my hand. “I didn’t know anyone w-was in here, sir.”

  The figure reaches up and pulls the dangling cord to the overhead light, making the room go bright.

  I squint as my eyes adjust to the light. Now I can see the shadowy figure is a man wearing a tuxedo like the other men at the party, except he isn’t wearing a tie and the first three buttons of his shirt are open, revealing a mat of brown chest hair that grows thinner as it climbs from his chest to this throat. He is leaning against an empty laundry basket. A lit cigarette hangs from his lips. On the windowsill of the open window beside him, sits a silver flask that glints in the light. The letter C is stamped on the front.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you, sir.” I turn around and head back toward the door.

  “Hey, hold on there! You weren’t disturbing me.”

  I stop.

  “You look like you need this room more than I do anyway.”

  He laughs, and I hesitate, unsure what to do next. I know I shouldn’t stay in here, alone with this strange white man. I should go back into the kitchen and get the silver tray covered with small sandwiches with the crusts cut off. But I don’t want to leave yet. My eyes and my nose are red now, and everyone will see I’ve been crying. The ache in my chest hasn’t gone away either.

  I look at him again.

  “You look like you could use a smoke too.”

  He hops off the counter, strolls toward me, and smiles, with his cigarette still hanging from the side of his mouth. The edges of his bright green eyes crinkle up, and I see one of his front teeth overlap the other. His auburn hair is a bit too long and a little greasy. It hangs limply into one of his eyes, and he pushes it aside. And his black tuxedo is wrinkled, like he threw it on in a hurry. But aside from those imperfections, he is a handsome man—very handsome. He slaps the pack of Newports against the heel of his hand, and one of the cigarettes pops up. He holds the pack toward me.

  I stare at the cigarette: the white filter and the gold wrapping paper at the tip.

  “What are you waiting for? Take one!”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t smoke.”

  “Oh?” He laughs again and opens his jacket, tucking the pack into one of the inner pockets. “She doesn’t smoke,” he mutters before raising his brows. “So what do you do . . . uh, what’s your name anyway?”

  “Delilah, sir.”

  “Delilah,” he repeats, then nods thoughtfully and tugs the cigarette out of his mouth. “What do you do, Delilah, besides crying in laundry rooms? Though I’m sure anyone would be brought to tears working for my darlin’ sister!”

  His sister? Miss Mindy is his sister?

  I look again at his green eyes and the auburn hair—now I can see the resemblance, though I didn’t know Miss Mindy had a brother. Agnes certainly never mentioned it.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I say, playing stupid.

  He taps ashes of his cigarette onto the tiled floor. I furrow my brows and stare at those specs of gray beneath the shadow of his wingtips. I’ll have to sweep it up later or Miss Mindy will have a fit.

  “Stop saying you’re sorry and stop calling me ‘sir.’ My name is Chauncey . . . though most people call me Cee. You can call me that too, if you’d like. And you know damn well what I’m talking about. I’m talking about working for my sister, Melinda . . . the lady of the house! That woman could drive a saint to drink. I admire anybody who could work with her, let alone be her maid.”

  “She treats me nice, Mr. Cee,” I lie.

  “It’s Cee, not Mr. Cee. Now say it with me on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three!”

  He sucks in a deep breath, and I giggle at his dramatics. I clamp a hand over my mouth with embarrassment for laughing.

  I wonder if Miss Mindy’s pilfered blue pill is finally starting to kick in.

  “Cee,” he says.

  “Cee,” I repeat and give a small smile.

  “There! That wasn’t so hard, was it? And you’ve got a pretty smile, Delilah. You should use it more often.”

  He takes several steps toward me, and I can smell him now. He’s a mix of tobacco, a spicy cologne, and rum. That’s what must be in the flask.

  “So if my sister didn’t run you off, why are you crying?”

  “I was just . . . sad, sir . . . I-I mean, Cee.”

  “Sad about what?”

  I hesitate again.

  “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  His friendliness is making me wary. I’m not sure if I’m stepping into some trap. Why is he being so nice? Why is he asking so many questions, and can I know for sure that he won’t tell Miss Mindy what I say?

  “People just feel . . . blue sometimes,” I mumble with a shrug. “Sometimes, you don’t know what’s wrong. You just know things aren’t right . . . that things aren’t the way they should be.”

  He takes another step toward me so that there is only a small space between us. He stares at me, eye to eye. I can’t hold his gaze. I don’t want to, so I look away.

  “And how should things be, Delilah?”

  I force myself to raise my eyes again to look at him. Yes, the pill is definitely kicking in, making me bolder. I could tell another lie, but I don’t want to do that either.

  “I don’t know how they should be—but I shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.

  “Dee, where are you?” Agnes shouts as she shoves open the laundry room door. “I’ve only got two hands! I can’t hand out all this stuff by my—”

  She stops when she sees Cee is also in the room. She does what she did with Miss Mindy the instant she sees him. Her face changes. Her shoulders hunch, and she lowers her head. I wonder how many times she does it during the day, shutting the door on her real self for white folks. I haven’t been around them as much as she has. I know the rules, but sometimes—like tonight—I forget them.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she says in a teeny voice. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  “It’s fine,” Cee replies. He reaches back and grabs the flask perched on the windowsill. He then digs out his tie from the laundry basket. We watch as he tosses his cigarette to the floor and takes a sip from his flask before tucking it into his suit’s inner pocket. “I was just leaving. I’d better get out there or Mindy’s gonna wonder where I’ve disappeared to.”

  He then glances down at the silver tie in his hand. It is so shiny, it gleams like aluminum foil. “I’m horrible at putting on these things. Can you help me, Delilah?”

  I stare at him in shock and glance with uncertainty at Agnes. She gives me no clue on what to do. Her mask is still on.

  Cee holds out the tie to me as he buttons his shirt. The tie dangles like a fish on a hook.

  “Well?” he asks, raising his brows.

  I step forward and take the tie before looping it around his neck. My hands start to shake again as I raise his collar and begin to put on his tie, trying to remember the right knot, trying not to touch him but just the tie and the shirt. He stares at me as I do it, almost smirking. He is amused by my discomfort. Agnes stares at me too as I do it, boring a hole into my back. My fingers accidentally graze the skin
along his neck and jawline. His skin is warm and covered with a prickly stubble. It makes the tips of my fingers tingle. When I finish with his tie, I lower his collar and ball my fists to my sides.

  “Thanks.” He gives me a wink. “You have a good night now.”

  Agnes and I both watch as he strolls toward the door. She quickly steps aside to let him pass her. When the door swings closed behind him, she whips around to face me.

  “What were y’all doin in here?” she asks. Her voice is tainted with anger, like I’ve done something wrong.

  “N-nothing!” I shake my head. “Nothing at all! We were just . . . just talking.”

  She eyes me warily. I can tell she doesn’t believe me. Agnes looks back toward the closed door. She stares at it for a long time. “You best be careful ’round him, Delilah.”

  “Be careful? Why?”

  “Never mind,” Agnes mutters, shifting her apron at her waist. “We’ve got work to do. Come on!”

  CHAPTER 13

  It’s been three months since that night at the party, and now Cee always seems to be at the Williamses’ house. He’s as permanent as the oil painting of the fruit basket and urn on the wall in their living room—the ugly one Agnes said Miss Mindy must have gotten from a yard sale. Cee stops by for dinner at least twice a week. Even Miss Mindy has noticed how often he’s around.

  “Cee,” I heard her say at dinner two nights ago when she’d drunk a little too much, “is Mama not feeding you at home? We might as well charge you rent, with how much you’re here!”

  “We could certainly use the money,” Mr. Williams muttered, and Miss Mindy laughed and laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world.

  But not everyone’s happy to see him hanging around the Williams residence.

  “Mmm-hmm, here comes the fox sniffin’ ’round the henhouse,” Agnes mutters whenever Cee’s cherry-red Pontiac GTO convertible glides into the driveway, all glistening steel and black leather seats. “If he had a job, he’d have other things to do than loafin’ ’round here all day,” she says.

  I always laugh and shake my head at her, then return to my ironing or whatever else I’m doing.

  Though I’m flattered at the notion, it’s hard for me to believe Miss Mindy’s brother is stopping by her home just for me. For one, he hasn’t spoken to me again like he had that night in the laundry room. When he sees me, he nods and says, “Hey there!” or “Hello,” and I do the same to be polite, but that’s all. And second, Cee already has a girl—some bottle blonde with a big bust and long legs who kind of looks like Marilyn Monroe but not as comely. He started bringing her around in June. When she first came to the house, I could hear her high, squeaky voice scratching through the wall plaster.

  Oh, Cee, you’re so funny.

  Oh, Cee, you’re so smart.

  Oh, Cee, not here! Someone might come in!

  I even saw him kiss her once while they were sitting in his GTO with the top down, and I swear no man has ever kissed me like that. Only one has ever tried—Benjamin Spencer from Sunday school back in Virginia. He called himself French kissing me behind our church one day, but all he did was dart his tongue in and out of my mouth like some lizard. I’d had to push him away.

  But that girl didn’t push Cee away. She nearly climbed over the armrest and onto his lap and probably would have done a lot more if it wasn’t for the steering wheel. He slid his hand up her gingham shirt, and the kiss deepened like they were trying to swallow each other whole. They were acting like they were alone in a bedroom and not sitting in the middle of the Williamses’ driveway, where practically the whole neighborhood could see them.

  I watched them while I washed the front windows, feeling the soapy suds from my rag ooze down my wrist and bare arm and soak the short sleeves of my uniform. After a while, I had to turn away, and not just because I was watching something that seemed too intimate for anyone to witness, but because it made me feel funny to watch it. It was like I was falling ill. My stomach started to cramp. My face felt hot and sweaty. To make it stop, I had to close the curtain. I grabbed my soap bucket and left the living room and the last windowpane unwashed.

  Now I stay away from the front of the house when he drives up with his girlfriend or plays in the yard with his niece and nephew. When he comes to dinner, I make an excuse to help Roberta in the kitchen with scrubbing the dishes and pots and pans so only Agnes serves the dinner table.

  Of course, I can’t avoid Cee all together. I catch a glimpse of him every now and then or hear his voice. My stomach used to twist into knots when that happened, but after a while, even that stopped. It is only a dull ache now that I’ve gotten used to. I know it is a silly infatuation that will pass, a schoolgirl crush that will be forgotten in a month or two.

  I distract myself with my routine: the laundry, mending torn seams, and mopping the floors. The upside of all this is that I am doing my job so well Miss Mindy told me today I can stay on at the house. Up until now, my employment had been conditional. She tells me that at least once a week.

  “You are on probation, Delilah. Behave accordingly,” she says through pinched lips.

  But now I’m not on probation anymore. I’m finally getting paid the same as Agnes—a whole two dollars an hour—and maybe I’ll be able to stow away a little extra money outside of what I have to pay my Auntie Mary for my room and what I send back home to Mama.

  I am thinking about that extra money and what I will do with it as I walk to the bus stop where I always wait for the 6:35 bus to take me back to Auntie Mary’s.

  I already know what book I will read as I wait for the bus: Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I am already at the part where Newland is riding alone in the carriage with Ellen, and I know something is about to happen, something that is exciting but that they will both regret later.

  It is July, and the air is thick and sticky with heat and exhaust fumes. Sweat pours from my pores like my skin is crying. It pools between my thighs as I walk, making my cotton underwear soggy. It seeps below my breasts and above my bra. I fan my face, though it does me no good. I pray for a stray breeze. As I’m about to cross the street, I hear a horn honk, stabbing the soft quiet of the evening. I jump back onto the sidewalk, worried I’ve stepped into oncoming traffic and I’m about to get hit by a car until I look to my right and realize Cee is staring up at me from the driver’s seat of his GTO.

  “I’ve been calling you, Delilah! You didn’t hear me?” he asks with a smile.

  I blink and look around as if he’s talking to another Delilah who must be standing next to me. When I realize I am the only one there, I turn back to him. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear you.”

  “I told you, enough of that ‘sir’ nonsense. Call me Cee! You headed home? You need a ride?”

  “No, sir . . . I-I mean Cee. I don’t need a ride. The bus stop is right over there.” I point into the distance where an empty bench sits near the sidewalk. “I’m fine.”

  “But I’m closer,” he drawls, leaning out his window to gaze up at me. “Hop in!”

  I hesitate.

  Everything is telling me not to get in that car—propriety for one, and convention for another. I do not know Cee well enough to ride alone in a car with him, and how would it look for me to roll into my auntie’s neighborhood, sitting beside some rich white boy in his shiny GTO?

  But then I see that traffic on the street has come to a standstill because Cee is sitting at the intersection with his engine rumbling, waiting for me to climb inside his car. A man in a fedora leans out the window of his powder blue Ford Fairlane. He taps his horn. Two more cars are behind him, and all the drivers’ eyes are on me. I look back at Cee’s face—those green eyes and upturned nose that are much like Miss Mindy’s.

  Will she be angry if she finds out I refused her brother’s offer for a ride home?

  “Much obliged,” I say with great reluctance as the driver of the Ford Fairlane beeps his horn again. I scramble to the other side of the GTO and yank open the door,
almost dropping my paperback to the ground as I do it. Cee pats the front passenger seat, urging me to sit down, but I push up the back rest and climb into the back seat. As I settle, Cee leans over to look at me in the rearview mirror. I can see laughter in his eyes again.

  The driver of the Ford Fairlane beeps his horn a third time. It is a long, loud blast.

  Cee finally pulls off with a rumble, and I feel the whoosh of cool air hitting me in the face as he drives down the street.

  “Mind if I smoke?” he calls over his shoulder as he digs out a pack of Newports from the glove compartment.

  It’s your car. Do what you want, I think but instead say, “No.”

  He lights a cigarette as he drives. It dangles from the side of this mouth. “So where to?”

  “Uh, Tenth Street Northeast please,” I shout back over the wind.

  He nods as he turns the wheel, making a left onto the next street. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth and blows smoke into the air. “So you’re a city girl?”

  “No.”

  “But you live in the city, right?”

  “Yes, but I just moved there. I grew up in Virginia on a . . . a farm.”

  “A farm? So what brought you up here?”

  “Work,” I answer honestly.

  If I had stayed back in Lynchburg, Mama would’ve married me off to one of the boys who lived nearby, like she had done with my eldest sister, Tammy. Tammy had dropped out of school in eighth grade and married Richard Bolton, a gap-toothed son of a tobacco farmer who lived six miles up the road. Now she had a house full of children and a husband who worked her like a dog all day and then climbed on top of her at night to make more babies.

  If I thought my brain was in danger of rotting while I served the Williamses, it would have certainly disappeared like a rabbit in a hole if I had stayed back home. Luckily, I convinced Mama to let me finish school so I could head up north, make money, and send some back for her and my six brothers and sisters. She hadn’t liked the idea, but she had seen how desperate I was to escape Lynchburg, to escape my fate.

  “Go on and go,” she said one night when I showed her the mason jar filled with money I had saved for a bus ticket and the letter from Auntie Mary that said I could take her daughter Lucille’s old room if I came to town. “You’re so fired up that you’d probably run away in the middle of the night to head up there anyway, even if I told you no!”