“Hi,” I say, forcing myself to form the word.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Laramie says, as if she were hoping Nicolette would be.
“I totally didn’t want to come, but my parents made me.” Nicolette rolls her eyes. “They said it looks good, or whatever. For me to show up to stuff like this.”
Mr. McKee is on the city council, but you’d think he was president of the country with how seriously they all take it.
“We’re only staying for a minute,” her friend, a blond girl named Shauna, says.
“Yeah, just so Irene sees me here. Then we’re going to Gavin’s house. His parents are out of town. He’s having a barbecue.” She looks at Laramie. “You guys could probably come if you want. You too, new girl.”
“My name is Edie,” she says coolly. “I live next door to you.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Nicolette snaps her fingers like she didn’t already know that. “I’m Nicolette McKee.”
Laramie looks conflicted. As if she’s actually thinking about going to Gavin’s party. I definitely can’t go. Her house is the only place I’m allowed to be when parents aren’t home. Maybe Edie’s, too, once my dads get to know Ms. Whitman better.
But I don’t want to go, either. Laramie is the only reason Nicolette is even talking to us.
I concentrate on waxing my board so I won’t watch Laramie’s face.
She finally says, “Thanks, but we’re just gonna stay here.”
Nicolette shrugs. “Suit yourself. Maybe next time.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Laramie says.
I feel my muscles unclench when Nicolette and her friends move down the beach.
“That was weird,” I say to Laramie.
“What? That she invited us somewhere?” Her voice goes up higher than normal. “I think it’s nice.”
I stare at her, then shake my head. “Never mind.” I shouldn’t have to remind her of all the times Nicolette has been rude to me. She’s been there for half of them.
“Hey, Alberta.”
I turn around. I’ve never been so relieved to see Oliver Guzman. He’s wearing his wet suit and holding his board.
“Oliver!” My voice is so loud and excited that his eyebrows go up.
“I’m gonna go in,” he says. “You want to come?”
I nod, and start tugging on my wet suit. Laramie says hi to Oliver and introduces him to Edie. I tie up my locs and grab my board.
Edie looks from us to Laramie. “Are you going in, too?” she asks her.
“No way. It’s too cold to swim most of the time. I’m just here for the sun.”
Oliver and I head down to the ocean. The foamy water crashes cold over my feet as the tide rushes in. I usually try to clear my mind before I paddle out, but I’m having trouble today. I don’t know why I’m feeling weird that Laramie and Edie are getting along. I should be happy that my best friend likes my new friend. Laramie and I have all the same friends at school. This isn’t any different than when Kelsey Romanoff moved here and I met her first and she and Laramie became good friends right away.
It sure does feel different, though.
And then there’s the whole Nicolette thing. It’s not like Laramie ditched us and went to the party, but it feels like she might have, even if Edie and I didn’t want to go.
I look back at them. Edie seemed so interested in surfing before she met Laramie, and now she’s not even looking out here. And I wonder if she would’ve gone to the party with Nicolette if Laramie had decided to.
“Waves are looking good today,” Oliver says as we walk into the water.
I nod and breathe in the salty air.
We position ourselves on our boards, lying flat on our stomachs with our legs straight behind us. Finally, I feel comfortable for the first time since I stepped foot on the beach today. The water lapping against my board is calming. It forces me to stop thinking about Edie and Laramie—what they’re talking about while I’m gone… and if they’re going to start liking each other more than they like me.
I paddle out, watching the waves roll in. Trying to find the perfect one for me.
CONSTANCE
SUNDAY IS MY LAST DAY TO SLEEP IN BEFORE SCHOOL starts, but I wake just as the sun is beginning to rise.
I toss and turn until I hear Dad and Elliott get up. I drag myself out of bed when I hear them mention breakfast.
An hour later, we’re headed back home from Rosa’s, where we stuffed ourselves with potato-and-egg tacos. Edie is sitting on her front porch with a mug nestled in her hands when we round the corner. Elliott honks the horn.
She stands and waves and keeps standing there even after we’ve parked in our driveway. I get out of the back seat and look at her.
“Can you come over?” she calls, cupping her hands around her mouth.
I’m surprised but pleased. After yesterday, I thought she might dump me for Laramie. They were nice when Oliver and I came back after surfing, and Edie asked a lot of questions about it. But I felt strange around them together. It’s the same strange way I feel about Laramie now, like she’s growing up too fast without me. Like things are changing too quickly and not quickly enough.
“Hey,” Edie says when I get to her front porch. “Do you want to come in? I found something in the attic last night, after I got back from the beach. I really want to show you.”
And just like that, I feel better. As if the… thing that woke me up early and wouldn’t let me go back to sleep has vanished. Like maybe Edie doesn’t think I’m childish just because I don’t wear makeup like her and haven’t started my period like Laramie.
“What’d you find?”
She raises her eyebrow and twists her mouth to the side. Her lips are painted black even this early in the morning. “Come up and see.”
Ms. Whitman is kneeling next to the couch in the front room of the B&B, rummaging through a box. Her dark hair is covered in a gray bandana and she’s wearing a button-down chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Good morning, Alberta. How are you doing, honey?” Then, before I can answer, she says, “Please excuse the mess. It’s getting better in here, but I still worry we’re going to be buried under cardboard for the rest of our lives.”
“It looks like you’re getting a lot done,” I say, because I’m not sure what else to say. It is messy and it does look like they might be overtaken by boxes sooner rather than later.
She gives me a smile, but also a look that says she knows I’m just being nice.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” Edie asks.
I stare at her mug. “You’re drinking coffee?” Elliott gave me a sip of his once and it was awful. Like tar that coated my entire mouth. I had to brush my teeth to get rid of the taste.
“Yeah, I get to drink it one day a week.” She laughs at the face I’m making. “Mine is good, though. I put in tons of sugar and cream. Craig used to get so embarrassed when I ordered at his coffee shop. He’s a coffee purist.”
“One day a week is fine. You’re too young to be getting caffeine headaches like the rest of us,” her mother says.
Edie refills her mug and pours me a glass of water before we go up to her room. She grins and pauses as I step on the last creaky stair. “Welcome back to my humble abode.”
“Oh my god,” I say, looking around. “It’s like a completely different room.”
“I missed my stuff so much.” She looks dreamily at the walls, where she’s hung framed posters. A couple of them are from musicals, like Sweeney Todd and Little Shop of Horrors. Another is of a cranky-looking white man with a black mustache and a huge black bird perched on his head.
“Who’s that?”
“Alberta! You don’t know who Edgar Allan Poe is?”
I shrug. “I’ve heard of him?”
“We really need to work on your reading list,” Edie says, sighing. She points to a silver clothing rack across the room. Almost every single piece of fabric hanging from it is black. “I have all my clothes now. And I go
t my yearbooks, so I can show you my friends back in New York.”
“It looks really… you in here,” I say, taking in the black duvet on the bed and the black rug with the silver designs. The little hexagonal window across the room is covered with a black lacy curtain.
“Thank you. So, you have to see this.” Edie looks at me before crossing the room. She picks up a big metal box with a lock on the front and carries it back to the bed, where we both sit down. “I started looking through some of the boxes that were here when we moved in, and… here.”
I look down at the contents, frowning. “Books?”
“Not books—journals. Tons of them. Do you know anyone named Constance?”
I shake my head. That wasn’t Mrs. Harris’s name, and none of her kids are named that, either.
“Weird. A couple of them have that name in them, but then she stopped signing her name.”
“Are you sure they’re from the same person?”
“Definitely. They all have the same handwriting.”
“Did you read them all?”
Edie pushes the box toward me. “That would take days. But I did read half of one yesterday. These are really old.”
I frown. “How old?”
She picks up the book on the very top of the pile and passes it to me.
Even the book looks old. It’s bound in a deep blue cloth that’s spotted with dark stains. I carefully open it. On the inside cover, in pretty, even cursive, I see:
Constance
1955
I flip to the next page and Edie looks over my shoulder as I read.
January 8, 1955
Oh, I think I adore San Francisco. Mama always said California “wasn’t for us,” but then who is it for? I believe she doesn’t enjoy big cities, but I love it here. The first time I crossed that beautiful bridge, I felt so alive. Sometimes the fog stretches so thick you can hardly see your hand in front of you. People complain, but I don’t care if I never see the sun again.
I didn’t know if I could do it. But I did. And it was the best decision I ever made, coming here. I am home.
Love, Constance
I rest the open book on my knees. “Where did she move from?”
“It doesn’t say.” Edie reaches for her coffee. “Or at least I didn’t get to it yet.”
“If she lived in San Francisco, how did all these journals get to Ewing Beach?”
She gives me a look as she slurps from the mug. “It’s just a few hours from here. People move all the time. My mom and I moved three thousand miles, and all our stuff got here.”
“Yeah, but this was 1955! Our parents weren’t even born yet. It wasn’t easy to just move around like that… right?”
“I think it just took longer.” Edie nods toward the journal. “Read the next ones.”
January 12, 1955
I haven’t written in a few days because I’ve found employment! It’s nothing glamorous, just enough to pay for my room and meals here at Mrs. Hansen’s. I had enough to get by for a few more weeks, and I had dreams of exploring every inch of the city. But Mrs. Hansen seems suspicious and doesn’t like me coming and going at different times. I don’t know why it matters. I have the money!
But I have to respect her rules. I can’t afford to get in any trouble. Not now that I’m all the way here.
Love, Constance
January 24, 1955
I am so tired most evenings that after I eat supper with Mrs. Hansen and help her clean the dishes, I’m immediately off to bed. Last night, I think my eyes were closed before my head hit the pillow.
My work is tiring, but I’m earning a living. One that Mama would not be proud of, but it’s honest. Mrs. Graham says she wants me to work for her forever. I laughed when she said that, but I think she was serious. I like Mr. and Mrs. Graham perfectly fine, but I hope to move on soon. I don’t want to clean houses forever, and I am not interested in serving cookies and milk every day to little children who see fit to boss me around.
Every time I want to quit and go back home and lay my head in Mama’s lap, I remember that I had to do this. This is the right place to be. Things would be are so much worse back home.
Love, Constance
“How many of these are there?” I ask, looking at Edie.
“So many that I haven’t counted.”
My questions seem just as endless: Who was Constance? Why was home so bad that she had to move to San Francisco? Did the little kids boss her around like Stephan McKee? But for some reason, what I ask Edie is “Why do you think her mom wouldn’t want her working for that family?”
“I was wondering that, too.” She fingers the edge of another journal with the hand not holding her coffee mug. “Sounds like she was a nanny who had to do a lot of housework. It’s not like women could get great jobs back then.”
I wonder what Constance really wanted to be. I want to know how old she is. And how her journals ended up in this attic, right here in Ewing Beach, after so many years.
“There is one I want to show you.… It’s from the same year, but she wrote a lot of entries, so I skipped around a bit,” she says guiltily, like I’ll be mad at her for reading ahead of me. Edie thumbs through a book that looks just like the one I’m holding, only the outside of it is covered in a chestnut-brown cloth instead of blue. She slides her fingers between two pages and passes it over.
I set the new book on top of the one in my lap and begin to read.
September 19, 1955
Today, Mrs. Graham had Mrs. Ogden over for tea. I overheard them talking, and I swear I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but they weren’t trying to be quiet, either. They were speaking about the Negro boy who was killed down South. His mother had an open casket and one of the Negro magazines printed pictures of his “mangled face.”
Mrs. Graham said it was a shame, but Mrs. Ogden tsked her. She said maybe if that boy had been minding his own business, he wouldn’t have ended up like he did. I couldn’t help it—I held my breath as I waited for Mrs. Graham’s response.
She told Mrs. Ogden that things are different down there, that we don’t really know what it’s like when we’re all the way across the country. Mrs. Ogden said the Negroes have been getting uppity since they won the Supreme Court case to desegregate the schools. But she didn’t use the word Negroes.
I’ve never heard Mrs. Graham speak so brusquely. “Marilyn, I’ve told you I don’t want that language in my home. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
Then Mrs. Graham came into the kitchen and put another kettle on the stove, though I was standing right there. As soon as I heard her coming, I busied myself with wiping down the counters. But I don’t think she even noticed that I was standing right next to her.
Love, Constance
A lump rises in my throat when I’m done reading.
“I think she was talking about Emmett Till,” Edie says before I can open my mouth. “Do you know about him?”
“Yeah, my dads are big on black history. They say the schools here don’t do a very good job of teaching it.”
“My mom and dad say the same thing about New York schools.” Edie pauses. “My dad… he’s from the South. Something happened to someone in his family, before he was born. Something really bad. Like what happened to Emmett Till, I think. He won’t talk about it, and he won’t go back there. My grandma still lives in Arkansas, but we never go back to visit. He always flies her up to New York.”
“Does your brother know what happened?”
She chews on her lip. “I don’t think so. But… I don’t know.”
I close the book and hand it back to Edie. “I think we should read them all. You’re right—San Francisco isn’t that far.…”
Edie raises her eyebrow. I tried to imitate her the other night, when I was getting ready for bed. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and practiced until Elliott asked if I was all right in there. But my eyebrow refused to arch in that perfect way, no matter how hard I tried.
“So
you think we can find out who this is? Because it’s gotta be someone who lived here in Ewing Beach, right?” she says. “At one point? Or maybe they still live here. Maybe Mrs. Harris was keeping them for a friend. Mom said she was pretty old.” Edie bites her lip. “I can’t believe someone would leave behind something so personal. It feels so… sad.”
“Are you going to tell Laramie about these?” I ask, looking back down at the journals.
“No.” Edie pauses. “Why would I?”
“I don’t know. You guys are, like, friends now,” I say slowly.
“Well, it’s not the same. Whoever this Constance is… she wanted to hear what they were saying about Emmett Till. She seems like she cares about these things.” Edie looks at me. “I’m not saying Laramie wouldn’t care, but it feels different with us, you know? Constance is talking about black people. Black history. And maybe it’s not the only journal entry like this. There was a bunch of civil rights stuff going on back then.”
I nod, staring down at the box. I can’t believe one person could write this much about their life.
“Whoever she is, Constance moved to California from somewhere far away, too,” Edie continues. “Her journals being in this attic… I don’t know. It feels like a sign.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know yet. But I feel like we have to keep reading.”
I’m not sure why, but I do, too. I feel like I want to dive into these journals and not stop reading until I’ve reached the last page of the last book. I want to know why Constance left home, where home was, and how long she worked for Mrs. Graham. I want to know if she ever stood up to anyone who talked bad about black people.
And when I look at Edie, I think she feels the same way.
COUSINS
I USUALLY HAVE FIRST-DAY JITTERS, BUT WHEN I wake up on Monday, I don’t feel nervous at all. Just excited. I think maybe it’s because I’m starting seventh grade—which isn’t as great as eighth grade, but not nearly as bad as sixth. I had a stomachache a whole twenty-four hours before I started school last year. But, really, I think I feel better because Edie is here now.
The Only Black Girls in Town Page 6
