Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White series Book 2)

by Barbara Neely

  “Hummm. It’s a mess girl, but it’s all the mess we got. No gettin’ away from it.”

  Blanche sighed. “Yeah, I know. But it would be nice just for a week to have our color be like tonsils, or toenails, or something else nobody really gives a damn about. We don’t even know what it would feel like, do we?” It may be twenty-two years since Amber Cove changed its expulsive thing, but twenty-two years is a minute in color-time.

  They were silent for a few moments, trying to imagine a life as foreign to them as life in a monastery.

  Ardell spoke first, in a cheery voice. “Well, hell, just ’cause this picture is full of light-bright folk, don’t mean the place is color struck.”

  Before Blanche could comment, Ardell went on: “And who knows, maybe they’ll be givin’ away money up there and they’ll give you a couple million to pass on to me.”

  People passing by her building probably heard Blanche laughing. When she stopped, Ardell went on: “I know the kids and the trip ain’t all that’s buggin’ you, Blanche.” Ardell hesitated for a beat or two. “I saw Leo yesterday. He asked about you. He…”

  “Ardell, you know it ain’t really about Leo. Anyway, it’s gettin’ late. I gotta go. Be cool, girlfriend. I’ll call you in a couple days.”

  As soon as she got off the phone, Blanche trapped the Leo thing behind a door in her mind and propped a foot against it. There would be time for that when she got to the sea. She closed the suitcase and slipped on her long, wide skirt—much more efficient than pants in those little toilet stalls on the bus. She carried her suitcase down the hall and sat it near the door along with her folded poplin coat and her canvas bag. She was standing in the vestibule when the cab driver blew his horn.

  Was there a special kind of light bulb that bus stations used that made gray-blue shadows puddle beneath people’s eyes? As usual, the bus waiting room had looked like the meeting place for the living dead. Blanche took a seat about mid-bus, on the side opposite the driver. She put her suitcase on the floor under her feet and wedged her purse between her and the side of the bus beneath the window. She set her zippered canvas bag on the floor under the window. It held all of her travel necessities: food—a chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomato and garlic mayonnaise, a pear, a bunch of grapes, some apple juice, a chocolate bar, and a plastic bottle of water; reading material—the latest copy of The Amsterdam News and Octavia Butler’s Dawn; a flashlight, an inflatable pillow, and toilet paper. She never trusted the bus company to provide the last after that time it hadn’t. Fortunately, her girlfriend, Sherry, who worked for Amtrak had given her a box of small rolls of travel toilet paper. Now she reached down and unzipped the bag. She fished out her inflatable pillow, blew it up, and laid it on her coat on the seat beside her. She watched the other passengers get on.

  Most of them were white kids in their twenties carrying backpacks or duffel bags, wearing saggy jeans and polo shirts. An ancient couple—like a pair of dried white raisins—got on and took seats in the back; a white man in a shiny gray suit with a large leather case that said “Salesman” sat near the front. A slick-haired man dark enough to pass for a person of color, if he wasn’t one, took the seat in front of her. A couple took the seats directly across from Blanche: A pasty-pale girl dressed all in black and a deeply tanned young man who kept jerking his head up and back to fling his near-shoulder-length hair from his face. His clothes were worn but expensively cut. Her clothes were new and cheap. She had the skin of someone raised on fatback and Twinkies. His skin had the glow that comes from whole milk, fresh vegetables, and plenty of protein. As soon as they were settled, they began necking with serious intent but little passion.

  The bus wasn’t full and it didn’t look as though she was going to have a seat-mate. She likely wouldn’t have had one even if the bus was close to full. One of the ass-backward rewards of being black in America was that you were often the last person any white person sat beside on the bus, which meant she often had the added comfort of a double seat.

  Once the bus reached the highway, there was little more to be seen out her window than a thick blackness with an occasional highway light or exit sign to break the dark into irregular charcoal pieces. She’d risen early and had a full day so that she would be tired enough to sleep through the bus ride. Now her body was ready for sleep, but not her brain. As usual, what she’d tried to lock out of her thoughts sprung free and ambushed her as soon as she’d relaxed her guard.

  Leo’s last phone call replayed in her mind. “If I thought for one minute that you were coming back, that you’d even consider…Blanche? Are you listenin’ to me? Damn woman! Even now I can’t get through to you!”

  She hadn’t denied it. Leo had never gotten through to her, that was the problem. They’d been a steady couple in high school and for a couple years afterward. Even in high school Leo had wanted to marry her. But all the married women she knew worked hard in somebody else’s house, field, or plant and came home to take care of a full-grown man and a houseful of kids who seemed to think her labor was their due. Blanche had other ideas. After she left Farleigh for Harlem, she’d see Leo when she went to Farleigh to visit her mother. She’d looked forward to seeing him, too. It was always extra-good to have sex with a man you trusted as much as she trusted Leo. When she’d moved back to Farleigh a couple years ago, Leo made it clear that he still wanted to marry her. She could see now how she’d let him believe that someday he might throw her down and hogtie her. She’d had sex with him practically every day for the first two months she was there, until she began to settle in and he began to get on her nerves. They still had sex after that, but more rarely. The cost—arguments about getting married and giving the children two parents was too high. But that hadn’t interfered with Leo’s plan, which—from the beginning was bound to fail. He thought she wouldn’t marry him. He refused to understand that she simply could not marry. There’d been two other men who’d tried to marry her. Both times she’d been overcome by the same feeling she’d first experienced at the age of twelve while stuck in a small elevator for three hours. She’d been comfortable with her decision to remain single for the rest of her life. Until this thing with Leo.

  By the time she’d left Farleigh for Boston, she’d grown nearly deaf to his complaints about being tired of waiting for her. She’d forgotten about distance and change. Two months ago, Leo had proven how tired of waiting he was by marrying Luella Johnson. How could a man who’d been attracted to her marry meek little Luella? Unless, of course, what the man wanted was someone to call wife, period. She hadn’t gone to the wedding. She’d felt like a person whose insurance policy had been cancelled. It hadn’t felt wise to travel. It was one thing to choose to be on her own and another to have no choice. The ninety-nine times she’d said “no” to Leo’s proposals didn’t count. She’d never rejected him, only marriage. But he had actually ended their relationship. He had finally and completely said “no” to her. The stab in her chest that accompanied the thought lessened a little in moments like now, when she accepted that the pain couldn’t be avoided. She shifted about in her seat and adjusted her inflatable pillow. The couple across the aisle had fallen asleep all in a tangle. From the lack of voices around her, everyone else might be asleep, too. She closed her eyes and listened as her breathing became intermingled with and then indistinguishable from the hiss-bump, hiss-bump of the bus’s tires.

  The dream dropped over her like a gunnysack. She struggled against it, telling herself she was just dreaming, just dreaming. But of what? The moment she opened her eyes it disappeared. She knew it was the same dream because she woke from it with the same empty feeling and tears in her eyes. Her fingers ached from clutching the armrests of her seat. She’d had the dream at least four nights a week since Leo got married, although she was positive that the dream wasn’t actually about him. When it became clear that the dream was going to be a regular thing, she’d taken the necessary trains from Boston to Harlem to see Mad
ame Rosa. Madame Rosa told her she was at a major crossroad in her life and the dream was trying to tell her something about the change that was coming.

  “Go to Mother Water. Honor and praise her, tell her about this dream. Ask her for its meaning, for the memory of it. She will answer you before you leave that place. There are connections she wishes you to make there.”

  Madame Rosa told her to wear light-colored clothes and white cotton underwear, to burn white candles, and go away from Boston—to a place with the initials A.C. (which Blanche had assumed meant Atlantic City because she knew Madame Rosa was partial to the casinos)—to perform the ritual Madame Rosa described and let the sea wash away her worries. It wasn’t until she returned home that she realized that A.C. was as much Amber Cove as Atlantic City.

  Blanche hoped Madame Rosa knew what she was talking about.

  She drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she woke, the day had taken over from the night.

  TWO

  The ocean was never this blue at Rockaway, or Atlantic City. The sky was not this big or the trees as deeply green in those places either. She’d never seen a place so beautiful north of the Mason-Dixon Line. There was a peaceful quiet about Amber Cove, even though she could hear the deep rumble of sea against rocks. It was as though the spot had gathered to itself all those small, deep silences between waves.

  Amber Cove Inn was smaller than she’d expected—a white three-storied central building with black shutters and trim. There were newer-looking, one-storied wings extending out from either side of the Inn. She glimpsed some cottages among the trees. Pine trees covered the area on the other side of the road and dotted the Inn’s grounds.

  She paid the cab driver and carried her own bag through the front entrance into a cool, slightly dim lobby. The lobby ended in a glass wall that separated it from the bar on the right and from the dining room to the left of it. Both looked out on to the terrace and the grounds and sea beyond.

  The lobby smelled of the sea and was furnished with deep, high-backed rattan chairs and love seats painted white with flower-patterned cushions. The rugs, over tiled floors, were rich in reds and blues that had mellowed with age. Occasional tables, a couple of lamps, some book and magazine racks, and three ancient Moroccan hassocks gave the place a used feel. And it was currently in use.

  At the far end of the room, a slim, white-haired, high-yellow woman with a mass of gray curls sat with a pencil in her right hand and a small sketch pad propped against her thigh. She looked up at the arrangement of flowers and leaves across the room, then down at her work with quick movements of her head and hand. The way she sat—straight, with her back not touching the chair—reminded Blanche of a tapestry she’d once seen of Old Queen Somebody or Another at her needlework. This woman, too, appeared totally absorbed in whatever she was drawing, but she had an air of awareness, as if she could see through her pores, which made Blanche sure her own entrance had not gone unnoted.

  Blanche looked around the lobby again. Despite the quiet and calm, there was an echo in the air of something not so serene. Something unpleasant had happened here, and not too long ago. She was sure she was right. She was good at sensing buildings, picking up the mood and personality of place. She thought of this sixth sense as a skill she’d developed from years of cleaning and cooking in houses, apartments, and offices of all types.

  Behind the unattended check-in counter was a closed door with OFFICE printed on it. Blanche tapped the service bell. The door to the office opened and out stepped a slight, light-skinned, thirtyish man with delicate hands and a puffy bottom lip. His black-on-white name badge said, ARTHUR HILL, MANAGER. His large, dark eyes widened when he saw Blanche. The full tilt smile that had automatically sprung to his face drooped, then dissolved when he raised his eyes to stare at her unprocessed hair. Without a word, he placed his hands on the counter, leaned slightly forward, and played his eyes over her luggage, shoes, and clothes in a way that said who made her clothes and how well she’d whiteified her hair were major issues for him. In the case of someone as black as her, were her clothes and the condition of her hair even more important to him? Something had to compensate.

  Arthur Hill, Manager, sucked on his bottom lip and squinted at her in a way that said she was definitely a problem. However, he seemed satisfied that she was at least wearing labels of which he approved and that her small suitcase was, indeed, real leather. He pressed his lips tightly together, then allowed them to turn up slightly at the corners.

  “Good morning. How may I help you?” Frost filmed his eyes.

  Blanche gave him a look cold enough to freeze hell. She held him with her frozen gaze until his shoulders drooped and he pumped up his smile. She wondered how he’d react if he knew her clothes had been marked way, way down or worn by the time she’d acquired them that her luggage had been bought hot in a neighborhood bar, and that she made her living the same way his great-grandmama likely did?

  “Good afternoon, young man,” she mimicked the status-establishing tone she’d often heard rich white men use. She smiled at his confusion. Once she gave him her name and told him Christine Crowley had made her reservation, his smile was back in full bloom, although it never got warm enough to thaw his eyes. Some things were not to be forgiven, no matter whose friend she was.

  Blanche filled in the card he slid toward her. A chubby white boy with wavy brown hair and a wide grin came running when Arthur Hill, Manager, gave the bell on the counter three rapid taps.

  “Enjoy your stay,” Arthur Hill told her with as much insincerity as could be packed into three words. Blanche rolled her eyes at him and sucked her teeth in disgust before turning away.

  The young man carried her bags across the lobby toward the arch on the right. As they passed near the sketching woman whose posture said “Do Not Disturb,” Blanche could see that while the flowers across the room sprouted from a blue vase, the flowers in the sketch the woman was doing sprouted from the eye sockets, nose, and mouth of what looked to Blanche like a cross between a human skull and an African mask.

  Blanche followed the young man down a sisal-carpeted hall lined with pictures of fair-skinned men with muttonchops and women with patent leather hair. They all had grim, stingy eyes and collars that seemed to be choking them.

  “This your first time at the Big House?” The young man asked her.

  “The what?”

  He explained that this was the nickname for the Inn. He stopped before the last dark wooden door in the wing. It had a brass number seven screwed to it. He pointed out the spacious bathroom, crossed the room, and opened a door that led to a common porch that ran the length of the wing. It was dotted with porch chairs and ended just a few feet past her door with a screened door and three steps down to the grounds.

  The young man’s eyes lit up with pleasure at the size of his tip. Being a woman in service, she believed in generous tips.

  When he’d gone, Blanche walked around the spacious room. She ran her hand along the arm of the oversized wicker chair with its matching footstool, the old-fashioned iron bedstead painted blinding white, the bureau under the gilt-framed mirror, the little writing desk in its own alcove. She slipped off her shoes and sat in the armchair, massaging the corn on her left baby toe. She almost convinced herself to take a nap, but she knew the impulse had more to do with wanting to avoid thinking about her welcome to Amber Cove than with a need for rest.

  She rose, stretched, and opened her suitcase. She was still fighting the irritation left over from her encounter at the check-in desk. She felt she was paying dearly to be someplace she wasn’t going to like. She wasn’t one for dismissing her feelings; she always got into trouble when she did. Like the way she’d tried to ignore that Republican vibe Malik and Taifa were bringing into her house. Now she had to do something about it. At least she’d be able to use this time to get some information. She wanted to see Taifa and Malik on their friends’ turf. She wanted
a glimpse of how and why being among people who had everything could make a child or a fool look down on those who didn’t have a pot. She also wanted to see how Taifa and Malik behaved toward her on their friends’ turf. Then maybe she could figure out what to do.

  She changed into oversized shorts, a shirt, and a pair of the world’s oldest Keds. While she was prepared to dress to accommodate Taifa and the other guests when the child arrived, Taifa wasn’t here now. She picked up her sunglasses and tucked her room key in her pocket. She left her room by the outside door. She crossed the porch and stepped down onto a stone path. She stood still for a moment, looking at the ocean. Madame Rosa called the ocean, Mother Water. Blanche liked that—it explained who it was that beckoned to her from the waves whenever she was within hailing distance of the sea.

  The path branched off in three directions—one toward the three cottages nestled among flowers and trees off to her right; another out toward the beach in front of her; the third along the beach side of the Inn. On the way to the Inn, the bus had passed a small village that she could just see in the distance to her right, beyond the cottages. She took the path that led to it. Her legs needed a brisk walk after all that bus; and she knew from previous trips that she had to get her postcards immediately, or they weren’t likely to ever get bought.

  AMBER COVE VILLAGE, the sign said. It could be walked end to end in five minutes. Its waterfront street sat on a log reinforced bluff. The houses, mostly white with black trim, seemed to run up the bluff, shouldering each other aside for narrow street space, making a pointy pattern with their steep roofs and small, narrow windows. Three piers jutted out from the waterfront street. She could see a few small, squat boats out to sea. Flocks of sea gulls circled them. The pavement under her feet felt gritty with sand, or salt. The buildings along the waterfront were wide and low to the ground, painted blue and pink and green with weathered wooden signs hanging over their doors or in their windows—HAND MADE HAMMOCKS, MAINE CRAFTS, STUART’S PHARMACY AND OLDE TYME ICED CREAM PARLOR. At the far end of the street, CARMICHAEL’S with greeting cards and sundries in the window. She was already thinking about the kind of card she wanted to get for Mama, Cousin Charlotte, Miz Minnie, and…A loud whistle blew as she was opening the door. She turned sharply toward the sea, looking for the source of the sound. Her elbow caught the woman who was just stepping out the door. The woman’s paper bag hit the ground and burst.