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

by Barbara Neely

  “I’m glad you like it," Mattie said.

  Blanche followed her into the kitchen. It, too, was a study in old oak: a round table and four high backed chairs, a vegetable bin, smaller tables that acted as counter space; a pie rack and old ice box probably used for storage. The kitchen floor was painted to look like a blue, yellow, and green rug with a fringed border. The kitchen was the only part of the cottage she’d been in that didn’t smell of turpentine and oily paint. She set the bread and juice on the table.

  Blanche was glad to see Mattie had some appetite and enough energy to insist on making coffee and cutting grapefruit to go with their bread and juice. Even so, this Mattie was smaller and slower. This Mattie looked less like old Queen Somebody and more like a very old lady in mourning. Blanche tried to decide if it had been a good idea to come. She wasn’t sure she could handle the deep loneliness that clung to Mattie along with her bad smell.

  “I spoke to Sinclair,” Mattie told Blanche. “Carol is in Forest Glen sanitarium outside Boston. She’s in severe shock. No visitors. I’ve called her father, poor man. I’m not even sure he understood me. Alzheimer’s. I spoke to the head of the nursing home where he lives as well. Carol’s mother died years ago.”

  “What about Hank’s people?” Blanche regretted the question at once.

  Mattie’s eyes clouded over. “His mother died on April tenth four years ago.” There was a slight tremor in her voice. “His father…” Mattie stopped to gather herself. “His father died of cancer last January eleventh. Delia, his mother, was my best friend. Did I tell you that? She was very fragile. Very beautiful. But no cream puff. She was determined to have a child, even though her doctor said it could be dangerous. Complete bed rest, the doctor said. She and Jack were living in Virginia back then. He bought a lovely old place way out in the country, away from his medical practice and the noise that went with it. Delia and I were inseparable that year. Memories lit Mattie’s eyes and made her smile. “Hank was the perfect child. Bright, inquisitive, funny. So endearing. You saw what a charmer he grew up to be. I used to love to come here summers. Just to see…” Mattie covered her mouth with her hand.

  Blanche remembered Mattie talking about her sons’ preference for their Caucasian heritage. Maybe she’d been trying to give her godson what her own sons didn’t want.

  The old Mattie suddenly glared at Blanche from beneath eyebrows drawn together like a ridge of snow across her forehead. “He didn’t kill her. I don’t care what he said in that note. He didn’t kill her. Do you understand me?” She leaned forward over her walking stick, adding a wordless demand for a response.

  “Ummhumm.” Blanche shook her head up and down. She didn’t agree with Mattie’s opinion, but she understood Mattie’s need to have it, to hang on to it until she could get accustomed to the extra weight of Hank’s death. Blanche wrapped her arms tightly around herself to keep from reaching for Mattie. She recognized Mattie’s posture, the defiance and will that kept her backbone stiff and made it possible for her to hold in the howl of pain Blanche could almost see clawing at her throat.

  Mattie folded her arms on the table and lay her head on them. She was so still, she might have been frozen stiff. When she raised her head, her eyes were dry, her face composed. She smoothed the front of her shirt and slacks and picked at the crumbs on her bread plate. Blanche doubted she was aware of what she was doing, but she was deep in thought about something. She stared off into space for a bit, then leaned back in her chair and began talking. It was as if she needed to clear out great swatches of her memory to make room for Hank’s death. She began with her girlhood life as a minister’s daughter during the Depression—working the church breadline for the poor in her best Sunday dress and being spat upon by a white girl her own age. She talked about being at university—one of two women, and the only black person in the school. She talked of meeting Carlton Syms after one of his lectures, of his obvious attraction to her, and the flattery in his attention; the way her dark-skinned father looked at her differently when it was clear this important white man was prepared to defy convention and his family to marry her.

  “My mother begged me not to marry Carlton on racial grounds. She told me, ‘Mattie, all we have is our people, our blood. We must teach them, provide them with moral and spiritual leadership. You have the makings of a fine teacher. You could help our women, be a model to them. You can’t accomplish this as the wife of a rich white man. Our people won’t accept you. His people won’t accept you. No one will accept you.’

  “But I didn’t care about being one of the Talented Tenth. I didn’t want to be a tightly laced proper Negro matron ministering to the minds and souls of my darker sisters. I wanted the world and Carlton Syms could give it to me. Anyway, Mother was wrong. There were plenty of our people who paid more attention to me because this white man found me worthy enough to marry.”

  Mattie laughed about her introduction to the physical side of married life: “I doubt I’d been kissed more than six times and Carlton was responsible for four of those times. I knew nothing of human anatomy or sexuality. My preparation for the physical side of marriage consisted of a lecture from my mother on the necessity of obedience to one’s husband and keeping oneself clean ‘down there.’ Imagine my shock when this man insisted upon seeing me naked, insisted upon climbing into my bed! Lord! was I naive! On the first night of our honeymoon, I told Carlton to remove himself from my bedroom immediately or I’d call my father! A preposterous idea made more ridiculous by the fact that we were on a steamship headed for Italy.

  “It took Carlton three months to break me in, and I use that term advisedly. In a way, I felt just like a slave—captured, taken to a foreign land, and made to perform acts that certainly seemed unnatural—at least at first. And I was just as unwilling as I imagine the slaves were. But the analogy broke down in month four with the arrival of my first orgasm.” She laughed and clapped her hands. “Carlton was a good lover, not magical, like some I’ve known. Oh yes, there’ve been others, including one that…and not all of them black. Or white, for that matter.

  Mattie paused, caught by some memory. She’d said something in the bar that first night that made Blanche expect her to talk about a special lover, but she didn’t. Maybe she had trouble letting somebody get close, too. She took up her story: “Of course, the lovers came later, after the children were away at school.”

  “My in-laws never accepted me, you know. My being black wasn’t the only problem. My lack of any financial resources to bring to the union upset them almost as much as my race. Even so, they insisted on nannies for the boys from birth to boarding school at age eight. Of course, Carlton agreed. He wanted his children to have all the advantages wealth could provide, all the privileges that accompany white skin, since the boys were light enough to qualify. When my in-laws commandeered my children, I had nothing else to keep me from playing out the fantasies that ripped through me when Carlton made love to me.” Mattie paused, her eyes turned inward. “From the moment of his death, I have done exactly what I pleased.”

  Blanche was fascinated. She’d never known a black woman who’d travelled the world, especially at the time Mattie had done; who’d never cleaned her own house; who only had to want something in order to have it. She pictured Rome and Paris and Spain through the eyes of a black woman and tried to imagine that black woman in the eyes of the people in those places. What had the Spaniards thought of this black woman caring for the wounded in the Spanish Civil War? Had it occurred to Mattie that she might not be welcomed by the French, or Dutch, or British people when she landed on their shores? But, of course, she had her passport—Carlton. Like the temporary Honorary White status apartheid South Africa gave to visiting blacks.

  While she talked, Mattie’s face took on her stories. Blanche could see the young Mattie being educated by her father at home and then being sent to university. She watched as Mattie, the girl, grew into the woman who buried Carlton Sym
s, new lines etching deep and forever into her face. Throughout her story, Mattie’s eyes gleamed as though flooded with tears, but none fell.

  At least five times, Mattie interrupted herself to turn her I-dare-you-to-disagree-with-me stare on Blanche and announced Hank’s innocence. Blanche continued to nod in agreement. But, in the end, that was not enough.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  Blanche sighed. “Why would he lie, Mattie?”

  “To protect someone.”

  Neither of them needed to name, “someone.”

  Mattie rose from her chair and stood looking down at Blanche. “Don’t you see? I knew him as well as I know myself. He was not a killer. He could not have killed Faith. It simply wasn’t in his nature. I am more certain of this than I am of my own name. But he loved Carol deeply. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for her.”

  Blanche was still skeptical. “So what do you think happened?”

  Mattie moved closer to her and leaned on the table. “It might have been an accident. Perhaps she didn’t intend to do it. They argued. You’ve heard what Faith was like. Maybe she was going to expose something Carol didn’t want known. She might have gone to Faith’s, argued with her…Well, you see the possibilities.” Mattie petered out.

  “But Faith was taking a bath, remember? If I was going to argue with somebody I was planning to jack up, I’d get up and put on a robe or something.”

  Mattie shrugged. “Faith was always arrogant.”

  “So you think Hank killed himself to protect Carol?” Blanche couldn’t hide her doubt.

  Mattie paced slowly across the kitchen and back again. “I’m not accusing Carol of causing Hank’s death. It’s more complicated than that.” Mattie picked up her walking stick and tapped it on the floor impatiently. “I never understood why he was so unhappy. He was good looking, popular, smart. Yet, he was fifteen the first time he tried. Fifteen! I didn’t even know what suicide was when I was…He saw a psychiatrist for years after that. There was another bad patch when he was a junior in college.” She shook her head dismissively. “Some girl was at the heart of it. I don’t think he really meant to die. Wouldn’t he have taken all the pills if he really meant it? By graduate school he seemed to just grow out of his…He met Carol. She was the mate he needed, someone a little older, wiser. She could lift him right out of his foolishness. We visited, wrote, travelled together. Everything was fine, fine. Until recently. There’ve been signs of the old distance, the way he had of seeming to just move off to someplace no one could reach. Carol tried to warn me, to make me see. I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to watch him teetering there on the edge of life, unable to help him, hold him. It hurt too much. Now…” She stopped pacing, breathed deeply, and pulled her shoulders back as if throwing off an unwanted coat. “But that doesn’t make him a murderer. Perhaps he was planning to…to die and then Carol told him what she’d done, and he…” Mattie’s nostrils flared. “I gave him everything, Blanche. Every bit of approval and devotion and support. Everything I could give. Every idea I thought worth repeating I talked over with that boy. For the last thirty years, he has been the only constant. The only one who…” The tears were too demanding, even Mattie couldn’t hold them back. She covered her face as she sank into a chair. She doesn’t want me to cry, too, Blanche told herself.

  While Mattie composed herself, Blanche was trying to decide what she needed to say to this woman whom she both admired and didn’t know, not in the ways that really counted. When Mattie talked about her life Blanche see her in Spain, at sparkling dinner parties, and living the mind’s life with Carlton, but who had Mattie loved beside Hank? How had she healed her heart when her sons first left home? What had she done with her parents’ deaths? It had not been heart talk. Too one-sided for that. But Mattie had offered not heart, but history—like a house with no furniture in it. Perhaps women who lived as she lived didn’t need each other enough to announce their good intentions toward each other in this way. Was this the gap that couldn’t be bridged—like the one that yawned between her and those few white women she’d worked for who’d called her Ms. White and invited her to sit at the table and eat with the family? Who kept insisting that she call them by their first names no matter how many times she refused to go beyond Ma’am? But Mattie wasn’t a white woman, although the life she led, the privileges she had, were far from common to most black women or men. Was there a different definition of black for folks who had never known the struggle of most black folks? Did she have to spot Mattie points, because she didn’t know the rules? Her mixed feelings about Mattie made Blanche even more determined not to lie. Mattie had already seen through her attempt to be noncommittal. Across the table Mattie’s eyes looked as though she were watching hell; her hands clawed at each other like sworn enemies. Grief can make you crazy, Blanche thought. She’d learned long ago that the best way to communicate with crazy people was in their world. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Are you going to the police?”

  Mattie looked as though Blanche were babbling. “Why should I? Will it bring Hank back? Those idiots don’t even realize Faith was murdered. Why involve them? They don’t care, they never have.”

  “You think it’s OK for someone to just get away with murder?”

  “What does ‘get away with’ mean, Blanche? Not going to jail? I don’t think anybody gets away with murder really, do you?”

  And, of course, she didn’t. Murder killed both parties. Neither one was who and what they were before the murder. And she shared Mattie’s lack of faith in the police. In her experience, black people who called the cops stood a good chance of being abused instead of assisted. “Still, there’s got to be some kinda balance.”

  Mattie nodded. “I’ll solve that problem when I have to.”

  Blanche thought back to when she’d first seen Carol and Mattie together. There’d been a couple of uptight moments, but that wasn’t all. Had she been totally wrong about what she’d felt between them? “I thought you liked Carol,” she said.

  “Of course I do!” Mattie snapped. “I don’t want to sacrifice Carol for Hank’s memory. And I won’t.” She looked directly at Blanche. “Whatever happens, I will stand by Carol. No matter what. But I know Hank didn’t kill Faith. And Carol is the only person for whom he would tell such a lie.”

  Blanche wondered if Mattie was aware of the edge to her last words, as though she resented not having been on that short list of people for whom Hank would tell such a lie. Blanche was reminded of what Carol had said about Mattie not tolerating any serious rivals for Hank’s affection. It was amazing how complicated love could be.

  “I didn’t see Carol at all the day Faith died. Hank said she was in bed with a migraine.” Mattie’s eyes all but begged Blanche to see and believe as Mattie did. “You can see how it could happen. Carol went to see Faith while Hank was taking a walk or something. Afterward, she was in a panic. She ran to Hank.” Mattie paused and looked off into space as though the scene were being played out before her. “He was probably relieved to be able to do this one last thing for her before he died.” Her voice was almost wistful.

  Mattie’s certainty about what had happened to Faith was almost visible. Was it just a way of dealing with her grief, a way of keeping Hank’s memory pure? Or was it, as Mattie said, a message from her bones?

  “But what if Faith had something on Hank?” Blanche asked her. “Have you thought of that? Or maybe Hank killed Faith because he couldn’t stand the idea of her putting Carol’s business in the street, even if he wasn’t planning to be around when that happened.”

  Mattie flinched but didn’t look away, or speak. She shook her head from side to side like a machine designed for just that movement.

  “Even if you’re right, there’s no way to prove it.” Blanche spoke as gently as she could, with her hands extended, palm up. But Mattie had an answer to that:

  “I don’t need to prove it
. I already know what happened. I simply want the evidence. I want whatever Faith was holding against Carol. It’s existence is what made Carol act as she did, and made Hank feel it was necessary to imbed a lie in the last words he wrote in his life. I want to know what it is.”

  “There may not be anything to find,” Blanche reminded her.

  Mattie raised her hand as if to ward off Blanche’s words. “There’s something to find.” The steel was glinting in Mattie’s eyes again. “I know it.”

  Blanche sighed. “So now what?”

  Mattie reached for her walking stick and held it in both hands. “I want to take a look through Faith’s things. But I don’t feel up to doing it alone.” She held Blanche’s eyes with her own. “I’m not accustomed to having to ask for help. But from our first conversation, I felt a connection to you that transcends words. I know I can trust you. It’s as though I was supposed to meet you here, now.” Mattie sank back in her chair, the last of her energy sapped by asking for this favor.

  As Mattie spoke, a bridge seemed to suddenly span the gap between them. A current of something warm and half-remembered surged through Blanche, something older than memory. She thought about what women have always been and done for each other since the first human breath. She thought, once again, of what Madame Rosa had said about her making connections here. And hadn’t Mattie used the very same word? Mattie, like Tina, was one of the connections Madame Rosa had said she was to make at Amber Cove. And there was more. Until now, Mattie had been a symbol of the kind of senior Diva Blanche’s mama and Miz Minnie and all the other wise old girls Blanche had grown up around might have been under more privileged circumstances. Given Mattie’s advantages, a small army of them could have changed the world. But Hank’s death had made Mattie a symbol of Blanche’s own future: She would not have Mattie’s comfort, but, like Mattie, she would probably be alone. She might be closer to Taifa and Malik when they were grown than Mattie was to her sons, but that wasn’t saying much. She could already see Taifa and Malik rounding a curve in their road that didn’t exist on hers. Maybe Mattie was supposed to show her something that would help her get ready for her own time of being once again on her own. She looked at Mattie slumped in her chair, seeming to grow smaller by the moment.