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

by Barbara Neely

  “Sometimes it’s hard being dark-skinned, just like it’s sometimes hard to be any shade of brown or yellow. But it’s not awful. We’re just as cute and wonderful as anyone else.”

  Taifa gnawed her bottom lip. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “I know you didn’t, honey.” Blanche wondered who the tortured child could be. She thought she’d met all the black children at Taifa’s school and definitely knew all the little girls in her neighborhood. There were none dark enough for this treatment, but then she wasn’t the one who said how dark was too dark. “Do you know someone like that? Someone people make fun of ’cause she’s dark-skinned?”

  Taifa’s head bobbed up and down. “Mariette. She came to our school after Christmas. She’s gone now, though.”

  “Gone where?”

  Taifa shrugged again. “Her parents put her in another school.”

  “Did you think she smelled bad?”

  Once again, Taifa shrugged her no comment then began to squirm. Blanche lifted her arm from around Taifa’s shoulders.

  “Did you think she was ugly or stupid?”

  Once again Taifa lowered her head.

  “What did Deirdre think?”

  Taifa relaxed a little. “Deirdre said it was stupid to pick on her; that we all have African blood and should stick together.”

  Blanche chided herself for not having tackled this subject a lot sooner, as Christine and David obviously had.

  “The only bad part of being dark-skinned is how people treat you. Dark-skinned people look like the first Africans who were brought to America, and probably like the first people in the world. I’m proud of that. But lots of people ain’t proud. Some want to forget we ever had anything to do with being pure black, or Africa. Even for whites, hating dark skin is like hating your mama, since all human beings came from Africa.” She wanted to go on, but she knew she’d said enough, for now. This was only the beginning.

  FIVE

  By dinnertime, Taifa and Malik had all but forgotten they’d been separated from Blanche for weeks. She was there now, accessible whenever they felt like leaning against her arm, letting her take much of the weight of their sweaty bodies, or demanding to be fed, listened to, taken seriously, humored or hugged. Blanche and Taifa’s color conversation still stood between them as real as another person, but Blanche could reach around it, although not easily. Taifa seemed wary, as though she suspected a trap.

  The Inn provided a children’s table, which freed parents for more adult conversation. Mattie, Carol, and Hank were already at table when Blanche and the Crowleys arrived, as were the Tattersons, but not Durant or Tina. In the Outsider section there were a number of people Blanche had never seen before. Couples. New arrivals, she assumed. Mostly about her age and older, all with that look of ease Blanche associated with the unquestioned assumption of their own high personal worth based on money, particularly family money.

  “I had that awful twenty-four-hour stomach flu three times last winter. You’d think being a doctor would win me an exemption.” David filled Blanche’s wine glass.

  “But while I couldn’t seem to do much for myself, I did have a doctor. A wonderfully kind and caring one, too.” He reached across the table and squeezed Christine’s hand. He tried to smile into her eyes, but Christine lowered her head.

  “She even blew up one of the air mattresses and made up a bed for me on the bathroom floor, so I wouldn’t have to try to crawl to bed after each bout, didn’t you, Sweetie?”

  Christine’s lips formed a remnant of a smile.

  “Now is that true devotion or what?” David beamed. Christine watched him fill her wine glass, then his own. Blanche could feel his attempt to woo Christine, like a toddler trying to budge a mule.

  When the Crowleys had first invited Taifa and Malik to summer with them and their kids, Blanche hadn’t been able to imagine why the overworked parents of two would want to take on two more kids—despite their explanation that there wouldn’t be any other children at Amber Cove this summer for Casey and Deirdre to play with. Seeing them together she recognized another possible reason: Nothing like a houseful of children to keep from having to talk to each other. Were they simply tired of each other? How did you keep a relationship alive with a person you’d lived with for ten or twenty years? Some people, like Aunt Mae and Uncle Charlie, seemed to move close enough to become a whole that was different from each of them but didn’t take anything away from either of them. Other couples, like Iris and Carl Johnson, who’d owned and lived on the top floor of the building where she’d lived in Brooklyn, seemed to have pulled so far away from each other their relationship was a crater dug with nasty words and filled with possessions they owned jointly and which neither would give up. Other couples she knew seemed to continue to like each other and respect each other, but bored each other to death, or only got along when they were apart. She looked from David to Christine. David was staring into his wine. Christine’s elbows were on the table. Her small sharp chin rested on her folded hands as she stared out to sea.

  Lord! She wished warring couples would stay away from people. She hoped their boat trip helped. In the meantime, she had something she wanted to talk about.

  “Did either of you ever meet or hear about a little girl at Wilford Academy named Mariette.”

  “Black?” David asked.

  “Definitely.”

  Christine lay down her fork. “Oh-oh. That sounds ominous.”

  “It is.” Blanche told her what little Taifa had said about Mariette.

  “Damn! This is the first we’ve heard about this. I hope those white folks didn’t try to handle this on their own.” David said.

  Christine leaned across the table toward him. “David, you’re president of the parents’ association. Why don’t you give the headmaster a call?”

  David nodded. “I will, I will.” He spoke again, quickly, as though afraid of losing Christine’s attention. “Remember our first dance here, Chrissy? You had on that wonderful blue dress, the off-the-shoulder one, remember?”

  Christine came close to smiling, but she didn’t answer. The food on her plate suddenly needed all of her attention. Blanche wished she were alone in her room with her book and a nice piece of fruit instead of stuck in the middle of love going loopy. They ate the rest of their dinner rather quickly and quietly. The children were still making chocolate sauce swirls in their ice cream and David and Blanche were still drinking their coffee when Christine suddenly rose.

  “Excuse me, please. I need a walk.” She looked taut as a guitar string. She dropped her napkin onto the table and walked out on the terrace and down the stairs.

  “Honey, don’t you think you need a sweater?” David called after her. He watched for as far as his neck would let him, then turned back to Blanche. Damn Christine for leaving her in the middle of this shit!

  David ran his hand down his face and groaned. “Sorry Blanche, but as you see…I’ve tried. She…Maybe you could talk to her. She respects you. She…”

  “May I join you?”

  Blanche wanted to jump up and kiss Mattie.

  “Carol and Hank are having a very boring discussion about tennis. I thought I’d table hop. Do you mind?”

  David stood, pulled out a chair for Mattie, and reordered his face. Blanche pushed Christine’s coffee cup aside. He asked Mattie if she’d like anything and went off to fetch her a rum from the bar.

  “You looked like you needed rescuing.”

  Blanche was surprised. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mattie had realized she was in a jam with David.

  “It’s not exactly common knowledge, but it’s been pretty obvious to some of us that Christine is no longer interested in David.” She gave Blanche a level look.

  David returned with Mattie’s drink. He set it carefully down before her. He didn’t sit down.

  “I thin
k I’ll head back to the cottage, get the kids settled down.”

  Blanche told him she’d be along later. She turned to find Mattie watching her.

  “Do you think we get what we deserve?” There was a serious note in Mattie’s voice to which Blanche responded in kind.

  “More likely we get what we put out there, what we give, I mean. That’s what I was raised to believe and I still do, I guess. No. I don’t guess. I know.”

  A cloud passed across Mattie’s eyes. “I’m not sure I want you to be right. Don’t you have regrets? Anything you hope you don’t have to pay for?

  “Sure. Don’t we all? I just ain’t got a lot of hope that I’ll get away with anything. I sure don’t feel like I have.”

  “No.” Mattie picked up her parked walking stick. “Perhaps you’d care to join me in a constitutional?”

  The two of them walked slowly down the terrace stairs. They could see Durant and Tina standing on the beach. Tina’s gestures looked like a fight in progress.

  “Fireworks.” Mattie took Blanche’s arm and turned her away, along the path that eventually led to the village.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t want to stay and watch,” Blanche teased her.

  “Almost anything is more interesting than young love. Or young anything. The longer I live, the more boring youth becomes. So redundant. Each generation rediscovers the wheel of rebellion, the wheel of love, and so forth and so on. We hardly know which end is up until we’re in our thirties. Sometimes I think we all ought to be locked away with books and music until we reach thirty-five, Do you agree?”

  “But, if we don’t get to make those two trillion and ten mistakes we have to make before we’re thirty-five, what in the world can we do with thirty-five?”

  Mattie nodded. “Good point.” She walked a bit before she spoke again. “Do you think the marriage will fail?”

  Blanche knew who Mattie was talking about, but she didn’t want to use Christine’s and David’s marital problems for conversational Ping-Pong.

  “I heard about the article about you and your husband’s work,” she said.

  Mattie leaned on her walking stick. Her eyes were on the sea. “Ah yes.” She slowed her steps even more. “I once felt Carlton had made me as much, if not more, than my parents did. They brought me into in the world. He made it possible for me to take advantage of what this wonderful world has to offer in the way of travel and beauty and comfort. I didn’t begin painting until Carlton took me to France, you know.”

  Mattie laughed then fell back into seriousness. “The human mind is so amazing! I read all of Carlton’s work. I proofread his galleys and read the drafts. I remember our conversations. Even today, I recall my contribution to those conversations and the way Carlton always took notes and read everything I ever wrote. I can still see the amazed grin that often spread across his face while I rambled. He was always complimenting me for being able to go right to the heart of things. Yet when he was alive, I never thought of his work as being dependent on mine, or of the acclaim he got as being rightly mine.” She frowned, shook her head, and turned to look at Blanche. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  Blanche was sure this wasn’t the first time Mattie had asked that question.

  “Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I knew, but wouldn’t let myself know because I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. What would I have done? Confronted the man who had given me a life of privilege and freedom and accuse him of exploiting me, of stealing my ideas?”

  Blanche knew the question wasn’t meant to be answered, but that didn’t stop her. “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what you ought to have done. And you probably would have, if you could have.”

  Mattie thought for a second. “Maybe I wanted to pay him back for all that he’d done for me.”

  “Or maybe you were so pissed off you knew you would have had to strike out on your own and try to make it alone, like the rest of ‘our sort.’ Not a pretty prospect when you’re in the catbird seat.”

  Mattie was startled, then chuckled. “You know Blanche, you have all the makings of a first-class bitch.”

  Blanche gave her a shocked look. “Why I sincerely hope so!”

  The both laughed.

  Blanche walked Mattie to her cottage, then headed back toward her own room. She had a date with Christine for a tour of where everything was to be found in the cottage, but she didn’t want to get there before Christine came back. She walked across the lawn, cool grass tickling the sides of her feet. With the help of the high, bright moon, a tall, wide tree cast a shadow like a black lace-edged fan across the lawn. Blanche peered into the darkness, looking for the presence that she sensed there. It was Tina, sitting on a stone bench at the base of the tree, her legs drawn under her.

  “Hi, Blanche.” Tina put her legs down and scooted over in a way that invited Blanche to join her.

  Blanche could almost smell Tina’s longing to talk, and she was pretty sure who Tina wanted to talk about. But Blanche wanted to know who she was talking to first.

  “Where you from, Tina?”

  “North Philly projects,” she said with enough challenge to identify her neighborhood as having a bad rep.

  “I’m from Farleigh, North Carolina,” Blanche told her. She nudged Tina with gentle questions until they were casting pieces of their past into the night like lights strung together to illuminate them for each other, lights composed of the pros and cons of growing up in a Northern city and a Southern town—up south versus down south, they agreed; sisters—they each had one (although Blanche’s sister had died), and Tina had a younger brother besides; parents—their mothers were strong women and their fathers were gone—one missing, the other dead; grandparents—neither expected she’d ever get over the loss of them.

  They talked long enough for it to become clear that the differences in their age, education, relationship status, geography, and so forth were small compared to the fact that Blanche knew without explanation what Tina meant when she said she’d felt so invisible her first year at Brown that she’d sometimes pinched herself to make sure she was still in the physical world; and that Tina nodded her understanding when Blanche told her that while she loved her children beyond measure, mothering did not come naturally to her.

  Heart talk, Blanche thought. Her term for the way women gave each other bits of their lives and history as a way of declaring their good intentions toward each other. Why would you mess with someone who knows your business? She remembered what Madame Rosa had said about making connections here. She’d been thinking about connections with the sea and the trees, not people. But now she was sure Tina was one of the connections Madame Rosa meant for her to make here.

  She and Tina went on to agree that black folks were still getting the shitty end of the American stick, even among the middle class; that they liked their work—Tina loved watching people learn while Blanche liked being able to choose who she worked for and when. They gave each other five when Blanche said “God Bless that Child That’s Got His Own,” was her personal anthem.

  “My mother says I’m too hard on Durant about his being dependent on his parents,” Tina said, which finally wound them back to where Tina had wanted to go in the beginning, but now with much more investment on Blanche’s part.

  “Mom really likes Durant. She’s never come right out and said, but I know she thinks I’m going to screw up the relationship. She’s always telling me to try to understand him better.”

  Blanche thought understanding herself was a better use of any young woman’s time.

  “What exactly is it that you ain’t supposed to understand?”

  “Oh, why he lets his parents pay his rent and give him credit cards and a car. My mom says people whose parents have a lot of money live like that. I say it gives his parents a way to pull Durant’s strings.”

  Blanche liked this young woman more and more.r />
  “I’ve never met anyone as sweet as Durant. But sometimes he just doesn’t get it.”

  Blanche was reminded of when she’d been young enough to think her few moments of experience with men meant she knew something about any one of them.

  “Is that his specialty, bein’ sweet?”

  Tina’s face went blank.

  “You know, his specialty,” Blanche repeated. “Like the way he kisses, or his jokes, or his sweetness. The thing that makes you press your knees together and give a little moan.” Blanche demonstrated what she meant.

  Shock flashed across Tina’s face but was quickly replaced by delight. Blanche settled in to learn more than she wanted to know about Tina’s heartthrob. Tina talked and giggled and sighed her way through how she met Durant at Brown, where they’d both gone to school—she from her inner city high school on a partial scholarship and education loans, and he following in his Dad’s footsteps. They’d decided to live together when they graduated last year, although Durant would have preferred marriage. Tina wasn’t sure. Now she was teaching English as a Second Language in Boston, while he was a biochemistry graduate student at Harvard.

  “So, that’s our story,” Tina gave Blanche and expectant look.

  “Humm.” Blanche nodded and tried to decide what to say next. Despite the long Tina-and-Durant-fall-in-love story, Tina still hadn’t said what it was she saw in Durant. Blanche wondered if Tina knew. She decided to go back to where they’d started. “You know his parents wouldn’t be so down on you if you weren’t a product of the projects, don’t you? It’s not all about color.”

  “I know. They probably wouldn’t mind if I was blue-black and super-rich. But that doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. Don’t you think?”

  Blanche had to agree. She’d heard white women who’d worked for the same cleaning service she’d once worked for complain about employers who treated them as though their being poor made them half-human. Nobody much talked about class in the US but it was out there.