All the Finest Girls

by Alexandra Styron

  Lou puts the card in the box and turns back to her wrapping. Yesterday we went down to Danbury and Lou bought Philip a pair of track sneakers. She lays them in a square of paper, but instead of taping it closed, she runs her finger over and over along the stripes. She’s been singing quietly along with the music on the radio.

  Chri-ist divine.

  Her voice breaks on the last word.

  “Why is Derek only in the second grade?” I ask. “He should be in third.”

  Lou doesn’t answer me. I’ve asked this question before and I know the reason.

  “I said why is he only in the second grade?”

  “I told you, Addy,” she finally answers. “He was having some troubles wit his spelling and such. Dey left him back.”

  “Why was he having trouble? What’s wrong with him? Is he retarded?”

  Lou sighs, turns to me. Her face is streaked with tears.

  “Quit it now. I’m pass tired. Just quit it.”

  I reach out for the rest of my brownie, though I’m not at all hungry. In fact I feel sick. When I’m done I squish the crumbs on my fingers. While Lou tidies up the room around us, I peel off two sections of the orange and place them in the back corners of my jaw, then get up and take a look in the mirror.

  “And dey don’t even call me de Godfadda,” I say, thinking of the movie Dilly drove us to see last week. During the entire picture, Lou held her hands near the side of my face. When the scenes were scary or bloody, she flapped her fingers down over my eyes. We loved it. We’ll go again another night. On St. Clair, Lou told me, she sees every movie twice. “So I can burn it in my mind.”

  “And dey don’t even call me de Godfadda,” I say again, turning to Lou, who isn’t listening to me.

  I walk over, sucking on the soggy orange sections, and sit on the bed where the grown-up scissors lie with the discarded paper. I stick the point into the palm of my hand, hard, until I see a tiny spot of red. Then I give the point a twist. The shock of pain runs up my arm. I twist the metal again, until it slices through my sickness, till it cuts away every single thought inside my head.

  14

  THE MOON WAS a white teacup by eight o’clock, the stars emerging slowly and arranging themselves into constellations. I followed Philip and Derek, the beer I’d drunk like a spring tide on the banks of my brain. The two men walked along, their heads bent identically, hands shoved into their pockets. For a long time, no one said a word. The night air was still and close.

  “Any word from Michael?” Philip asked his brother, who nodded his head almost imperceptibly in response.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Left a message.”

  “Where?”

  “What do yah mean where?” Derek asked, annoyed. “At home. Brixton somewhere.”

  “And?”

  Without looking up, Derek veered off the road, leading us through a cut in a hedge of coral vine. Here we met up with a loamy path, different from the one I’d traveled earlier in the day, that switched back and forth along a long hill.

  “He called last night. Talked to Marva. He told her it was too far to travel. Couldn’t get enough time off. Said he’d send a check.”

  I listened, vaguely, to the men and their conversation, paying enough attention to understand that Lou’s brother was staying in England when he ought to have come home. But honestly, I can’t say I cared much. I was too busy concentrating on the trail before me and pitying myself. Watching Lou’s boys moving on ahead, talking of things I knew nothing about, chafed at me. I felt left out and determined to make myself known.

  “What’s too far to travel?” I said, trotting up to the two. Breaking off midsentence, Derek looked at me as though I were a troll emerging from beneath the woodbine.

  “I came. No problem. I mean, New York isn’t London. But still.”

  Neither man said a word.

  “Your mom was so great,” I said wedging myself between them and venturing a hand on Derek’s back. It was obvious to me all of a sudden that I hadn’t impressed upon him how I really felt. Knowing that Lou was truly loved would give Derek comfort, ease his anger and pain.

  “Really,” I continued, “she was the best. God, I miss her. Have missed her. All these years.”

  I looked at Philip, whose mouth was set in a frozen grin. Maybe I’d been wrong about Philip. He wasn’t so bad after all.

  “You know what she used to call me? Her white daughter. You my white daughta! Fah true you are! She used to say it just like that. And I’d call her my black mother.”

  Derek gave me a quizzical look. Did that sound strange?

  “Not in front of other people,” I clarified. “Just when we were alone.”

  Finally, walking between Derek and Philip, I felt I belonged. Lou had, after all, been a mother to me too. She loved me. But more than that, she saw me, like no one else had ever done. Lou looked beneath that tangled disaster of a little girl and found someone loveable. And I, because I was special in her eyes, saw her. I looked beyond Lou’s skin color, her accent, everything that made her different. My parents pretended to, but they were just going through the motions. I was the one who really got it. For me, there were no distinctions. These men and I were siblings, truly, united at last. We were meant to grieve together. That’s why I was there.

  My mind was now tripping around all sorts of germane subjects, and it suddenly seemed I should explain something terrifically interesting: the world I came from.

  “You know, most people in Coldbrook, I don’t think they’d ever even seen a black person before Lou came to us.”

  Derek was studying me, listening intently, when Philip interrupted. God, he was rude! Skipping in front of his brother and me, he spoke loudly to Derek.

  “You remember when Mumma wore that blue dress the first time?”

  Philip bent forward to catch his brother’s eye. I opened my mouth to continue speaking, but Philip jumped in again.

  “Remember?”

  “No. No, I don’t,” Derek finally responded as we reached the end of the path and turned onto a flat road. Philip started walking backward, his long limbs jangling about as he gesticulated.

  “Independence Day. You, me, Papa, Mumma, Denise, Uncle Fry. Two other ladies. I don’t know who. At Buck’s Hill! You gotta remember!”

  Derek shook his head.

  “Before, in the morning, Mumma was clipping a tie on you and you started to cry. Remember that? She thought she hurt you but she couldn’t get you to talk. Finally you say, all sniffly, ‘You so beautiful, Mumma!’ Damn, Papa and I laughed hard.”

  I giggled. Derek shot me a look that shut me up. Philip walked close to his brother now, nudging him with an elbow.

  “You were small, like three or something. We got new shoes and my feet hurt so bad I thought I’d die, because we walked to Buck’s Hill from the house. You remember that house, past Simon’s pasture?” Philip was working hard to get Derek to join in the spirit of reminiscing, but his little brother wasn’t biting. Giving up my own monologue, I fell behind a couple of steps. Philip continued. “The streets were full of people, nobody driving. Full! Everyone in their Sunday clothes, walking the hill. These big ribbons, in blue and red and green, wrapped around every tree in Eldertown. And fireworks. They scared you, so Papa carried you, and I got mad because it was me with the sore feet. When we finally got there, Papa put us up close, where all the ministers sat. He was in Parliament then, because we were inside a special box.”

  We passed beneath a house built into the cliffside, and music drifted out of its open door. A man stood in the darkness of his tilting porch. All right, he called out to Derek, who raised a hand in response. Though he hadn’t said a word, I noticed that Derek walked now with his head slightly cocked. It seemed he was actually listening to his brother.

  “I’m thinking how heavy that day was,” Philip continued. “Intense. I didn’t know what the hell was going on then, but I remember how everyone was really excited, but there was all this
tension too. You could feel it in the air. There were soldiers everywhere, in front of the governor’s house. And when Chesley came out, the crowd cheered. Papa and the rest of Parliament stood up. People threw flowers, and then on top of that I remember yelling. We couldn’t see the Rastas protesting, we were too far forward, but they must have been making a shitstorm outside the courthouse. I saw them later, carrying some kind of effigy. Or maybe I just think I did since I’ve read about it so much. I do know that when the British governor started swearing Chesley in, Mumma told Uncle Fry she could see a fight breaking out behind us. Then you started to cry and Mumma had to take you out of the box. You didn’t stop practically all afternoon. She kissed you and rocked you, bought you a sweet, but you wouldn’t stop.”

  “His face was melting,” Derek said, his voice rising over the crush of old seashells beneath our feet.

  “Who’s melting?” said Philip.

  “Chesley. His face was coming off. I remember that. Me being afraid because he was white and then it got really hot out and he started turning black. His fucking face was coming off. Dripping. Horrible-like. Jesus, that scared me. Was that Independence Day?”

  “Yah. Chesley wore some kind of makeup to look more white. And it came off during his swearing in. You remember that? Wow. Yah, it was noon in August. Stupid asshole. Ruined him. People were laughing, I guess, but I didn’t notice it. I was too worried about my swelled-up feet.”

  “I was always expecting Papa’s face to come off in the sun after that,” Derek said, shaking his head. “Or sometimes I thought I’d turn white when I grew up. I never forgot that. Jesus.”

  “Yah, but Derek, don’t you remember after that, the party? At Fort Charles? Went on all night. People were done up, doing the bamboula and bel-air, I don’t know what all else.”

  Philip started swinging his arms around, laughing.

  “And stick fights. It was a sweet night. Mumma and Papa danced, and Papa leapt around with you on his shoulders. He used to love to ride you on his shoulders. Remember? Called you his boonoonoo boy. Right?”

  Derek spoke with quiet bitterness. “Unh-unh. No, I don’t remember anything like that.”

  Charging ahead, Philip intercepted his brother’s blackening mood.

  “Anyway, night came. The whole of Eldertown lit up. Uncle Fry and the other ladies went off to drink and came back saying someone, a famous actor, was at the Sea Palace. Mumma screamed, and I’d never heard her do that before. We went over to look, but they wouldn’t let you and me in the bar. Denise waited outside with us and we fell asleep in the grass.”

  Philip looked to his brother, hoping at last to have jogged his memory, then let the subject drop.

  “Anyway, that was something, that day.”

  “Richard Widmark,” I said.

  Derek and Philip stopped beneath a streetlight and looked back at me.

  “It was Richard Widmark. She had a picture of him, signed. It said ‘Happy Independence Day. Best Wishes.’ And his name.”

  I felt a flush of pride for solving the mystery. Despite himself, Derek laughed.

  “Richard who?” he said.

  “Murder on the Orient Express,” said Philip. “Yah, she’s right. Mumma must have seen him at the cinema.”

  Minutes later we reached Clifton’s. Behind a chain-link fence appliquéd with hubcaps, Philip’s Cadillac sat up on blocks, open-hooded in the moonlight. Clifton was in the driver’s seat, his head bobbing to a reggae-tinged rap thudding out of the car radio. A dozen other men lounged among the rusted appliances, car parts, and corrugated tin, the air rich with the funk of marijuana. We walked in from the back, unnoticed by Clifton. Derek was practically in the passenger door before the mechanic looked up through heavy lids.

  “Colonel,” said Clifton, his rubbery lips wandering into a toothless smile. His eyes were as yellow as egg yolks. Philip and I stood at the back of the car and Philip nervously pulled on his beard. This was obviously not his scene. Derek and Clifton began to talk in a rapid island patois, not one word of which I understood, and while Philip listened in, I walked around to the front of the car. The place was illuminated by three clip lamps, hung off the fence and juiced by a string of jumper cables hooked to an overhead power line. The lights dimmed and flickered, nearly in time to the music. Nice disco, I thought. Not that I felt much like boogying when I saw the damage to the front of the Caddy. It was decidedly worse than I remembered. The passenger-side headlight winced at me, and the fender buckled up against both front tires. Through the windshield I could see Clifton peeling himself off the seat as slowly as physics would allow.

  “Bakra Man,” he said, ambling around the hood, “how come yah didn’t say yah brothas wit de Colonel? Him and me partners from way back.”

  Philip smiled uncomfortably and looked at Derek, who said nothing.

  “Well, you know,” Philip answered, “he doesn’t like me advantaging his good name.”

  Clifton snorted and scratched the little curls on his bare chest. His cutoffs slipped so low on his hips that I turned quickly away and looked toward the far end of the yard. In the shadows, someone was gesturing to me.

  “So,” Philip said, “what’s the deal?”

  Squinting, I could make out a dark figure with what looked like an enormous head, seated on a pile of tires.

  “Clifton ain’t nuh Detroit man,” the mechanic was saying as I wandered away. “Ain’t nuh assembly line here.”

  Getting closer, I began to see the contours of a tall man with a huge beehive of hair stuffed up inside a woven red cap. He was smiling, beckoning me with a long finger. When I got near and could see his T-shirt, I recognized him as the fisherman who’d been outside the bar that afternoon. He held out to me an enormous joint. I waved it off as casually as possible, feeling a familiar bullet of anxiety trying to pierce through my mild drunkenness.

  “Yah don’t lick corn?” he asked, with a floppy warble that, by comparison, made Clifton sound like Henry Higgins.

  “Nah,” I said, adding a lame just-not-in-the-mood shrug.

  “Cool. Das cool. So what ya doin’, den?”

  “Hmm?” I replied, floundering. “Nothing. Not much. How about you?”

  “Jes’ chillin’. Jes’ limin’.”

  I waited, figuring he wanted something. He lifted his chin. “Whas ya name?”

  When I told him, he slowly shook his head.

  “Addy? Nuh. You more a Pearl to me. Like yah skin,” he said, pointing to my arm. “Yah. Pretty Pearl. I’s watchin’ yah before. Nice.” He took a long hit off the joint, which glowed like a taillight in the darkness. Two other men, sitting on a washing machine not far away, laughed quietly as their friend hopped down and put out his hand.

  “I Sebumbo.”

  I shook his hand.

  “’Syah boyfriend?” he asked, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Cadillac.

  “What, him? No. Neither of them. No.”

  “Husband?” he asked leaning in close enough that I could smell his wicked breath.

  “Nope.”

  “Yah dance wit me?”

  The absurdity of my situation finally got to me, and I began to laugh. The truth is I was so uncomfortable at that moment I thought I might wet my pants. Encouraged by my laughter, Sebumbo put an arm around my waist. When I tried to pull away, he pressed me against himself. The music bumped and jived from the open car doors.

  “Yah jes’ chill, mama. Yah wit Sebumbo now.”

  Using his hips like a gyroscope, he swung me out onto his sandy dance floor. The more I resisted, the tighter he held me. His friends, whom I could see in the distance, were bobbing their heads in appreciation. “Relax,” he whispered, following the music’s heavy pulse and pulling my face to his shoulder. He put his hand on my ass, and I felt a spark of tension begin to blaze at the back of my head. I was having trouble breathing. The man smelled horrible. An unmistakable hard lump of an erection soon sprung up between us, and Sebumbo, making sure I didn’t miss it, ground
himself into my belly button. The song was eternal. I moved about gamely, tried to be cool, but beneath my silence I was hysterical. It was not a new tune but a firm voice that finally set me free.

  “Bumba. Letta be.”

  My partner slowly unhanded me, and I turned to see Derek, arms folded across his chest. I was soaked with sweat. Sebumbo said something under his breath I didn’t understand, but the purr of it was decidedly raunchy.

  “Check yah latah, Pearl,” he said as I moved quickly to Derek’s side. Trying to recover, I offered a pathetic wave. Back in the light, Derek eyed my soggy frame and looked me in the eye.

  “You arright?”

  I nodded, rolled my eyes. My head was killing me. The good news was I no longer felt remotely drunk.

  “He’s harmless. Brain-dead.”

  Before I could thank Derek, he gave me his shoulder and walked away. Over by the car, Clifton had an arm around Philip, hanging on him and putting on a long face.

  “Grievous sorry ’bout yah mumma, my man. I’ll be fixin’ yah car straightways. But it won’t be fah tomorrow. Maybe de next day.” Clifton lowered his voice, looked around his yard before adding, “And me not even charge you regulation price.”

  Philip nodded slowly, puckering his lips, then pulled out his wallet. As Derek and I began to walk away, Clifton shouted out to us.

  “Colonel! Yah certain yah brothas wit Bakra Man?”

  Derek nodded. Clifton waggled a pink tongue.

  “Dere be a whitey inna woodpile, huh?”

  The mechanic’s laugh ricocheted off all the metal surfaces and followed us back down the long road.

  Exasperated by me, my ex-boyfriend Daniel Moss once said I was like a Komodo dragon. Shortsighted, cold-blooded; you could be pretty certain I was dead until, unblinking, I stretched my maw and swallowed you whole. A born naturalist who wanted to be a travel writer, Daniel loved metaphors, especially when they rationalized my “primitive behavior.” Hunger, lust, rage, I subverted every emotion into a strange, reptilian repose. I know he was trying to get a rise out of me with his armchair zoology. And I wish he had. The fact was, I didn’t feel much of anything at all when I was with Daniel. And when we fell apart, over and over again, I felt even less. In a sense, his metaphor was entirely accurate. I flat-lined, then sucked him into the black hole of my trance.