by Janet Walker
* * *
They entered the mansion not through Grace’s normal route, the garage and laundry room and kitchen, but through the front entrance, so that Tracy could receive an impressive introduction. In the illuminated foyer, Tracy looked up. Above their heads, a sparkling crystal-and-brass chandelier—Tracy thought the droplets of glass were diamonds—cast a strong bronze light on the waxed tan wood of the floor. To their left was a huge arched entrance to a darkened room. Tracy spotted several things in the dimness: fancy furniture, a huge white fireplace, a giant portrait of a young woman in a wedding dress. She stepped closer and instinctively looked up. The sky smiled down at them, a great black expanse with stars winking at them through glass. “Wow,” she said softly. Grace smiled and showed Tracy all the areas of the house. The only room she did not invite the girl into, even though she pointed it out, was the master suite. At the end of the tour, they stood outside on the patio, where the swimming pool glowed neon blue in the night.
“Wow, Miz Grace,” Tracy repeated softly.
In the soft illumination of nighttime lights—the quivering blue of the pool, the muted orange from the mansion—Grace looked into the face of her star player and felt a rush of affection.
“Don’t feel so overwhelmed,” she advised gently. “You can have something like this, too. Even though,” she added, “there are much more important things in life than…things.”
“I can have something like this?” the girl asked. “How?”
“Do what I tell you to do. Study hard. Go to college. Be a good student-athlete. Learn how to manage your personal finances. Meet the right people. I can help you do that.”
Tracy looked hard at the woman’s face. “Why you want to help me?”
Grace was both surprised and fascinated by the question. She answered sincerely.
“Because I like you, Tracy.”
The girl frowned slightly in confusion. “Why you like me?”
Grace’s eyes were bright with amusement. “Why wouldn’t I?” She hesitated. Sobriety slid into her spirit. “Not only are you athletically gifted, you are the most sweetly humble child I have ever met. Who wouldn’t like you?” she asked rhetorically. Tracy grew gravely quiet. Dapples of illumination from the pool played off the sides of their faces, so Grace saw it when the teen’s eyes filled. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“My mother doesn’t,” the girl answered softly.
Grace started to object, to politely refute the teen’s opinion, but decided to give the girl a sympathetic smile instead. Tracy smiled in return and then shivered.
“Let’s get you inside before you become an ice sculpture,” Grace teased.
Tracy smiled at the remark and was not surprised when Grace slipped an arm through hers as they walked inside.
By midnight, Grace Gresham-Nelson was asleep in the majestic bedroom in the east wing of the mansion. Down the hall, in one of the guest suites in the west wing, Tracy Sullivan lay in bed in the dark, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. She still could not believe she was here. She’d had no idea, when she awoke this morning in her small pink-and-white bedroom in MacDonald Park, that the night would find her falling asleep in a spacious guest room in Miz Grace’s home. A mansion. A place filled with the most beautiful things Tracy had ever seen. A home in a neighborhood where everybody was black and rich and lived on smooth streets named after the Martin Luther Kings. Unbelievable, and wait till she told Scooby about it.
Momentarily, Tracy climbed out of bed and walked over to the room’s large window. She pushed aside the heavy curtain and looked outside. The night was cold and quiet in the Gresham-Nelson backyard. The swimming pool’s underwater lights turned it into a glowing blue eye. Miz Grace had said the pool was heated this time of year, and Tracy knew that this accounted for the steam that now rose from the water. Beyond the pool lay the dark oval strip of a running track, complete with yellow painted lanes. Nearby, a brick building that looked like a small gymnasium lay in shadows. Far away, in a corner near the property’s white wall, stood a tall lamppost, an electric light source that cast an orange glow over the back yard. Tracy pursed her lips. So this is what it meant to be Miz Grace. To be Jazz Nelson. To be rich and famous. She thought of Aunt Madge and Uncle Ed and their house in MacDonald Park. How silly of her to have thought them rich! And then she thought of her own home, Mama’s miserable tiny apartment in Area Place, and Tracy Sullivan made a decision: She definitely would listen to Miz Grace. She would study hard and read all her assignments and pull up her grades and go to college, yes, she would because—she glanced again over the scene outside—she wanted to live like this when she grew up. She wanted to be a famous athlete and have money and nice clothes and work in a school where everybody wished they could be like her. She wanted this more than she had ever wanted anything—anything—in her life. Tracy left the window, thought again of Miz Grace, and slipped into the fresh guest bed, where soon she fell deeply into a wonderful sleep.
