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

by Barbara Neely

  “We’ll deal with this tomorrow,” Blanche told her. “You get some rest.” She left Mattie lying on the sofa.

  Walking back to the Crowleys’, Blanche could still feel the weight of Mattie's grief. Was it all the heavier because the woman could be as icy as January? And what were they likely to find in Faith’s cottage, because she didn’t doubt that she was going to help Mattie—partly because she was sure it was what Madame Rosa intended and partly because she was how she was: nosey, she heard Ardell say in her mind.

  But while she might be willing to help Mattie, she wasn’t as convinced as Mattie’s bones, that Carol had killed Faith. Still, bones were often smarter than brains, although she doubted it in this case. Poor Mattie.

  Blanche suddenly felt the need to be in family—this temporarily enlarged one would do. She surveyed the pantry, fridge, and freezer and found them all well stocked. She checked around for spices, utensils, and so forth, then gathered fresh tomatoes, tomato paste, thyme, parsley, lemon, and scallions for the kids’ favorite lunch—cold tomato soup and garlic cheese toast.

  Tina stomped into the kitchen and announced that she’d just had yet another fight with Durant about his mother.

  “Maybe ya’ll need something else to talk about. I don’t recall doing all that much talking about the mamas of the men I was seeing. No, indeed, honey. We didn’t hardly have time for mama talk.”

  “Sounds hot.” Tina took a grape from the fruit bowl on the counter and popped it into her mouth.

  Blanche stifled the impulse to tell her not to spoil her lunch.

  Tina took another grape. “Sometimes I think men are so different from us we’re like two different species who can’t even speak the same language.”

  Blanche dunked tomatoes in hot water to loosen the skins. “Sometimes, and in some ways, I think you’re right. Lord knows I’ve had enough conversations with men where I felt like I was speaking another language. Simple things—like how do you really feel?—scare the poor things half to death. I think we need to stop expecting men to be able to handle much beyond our behinds and a basketball.”

  “Blanche! You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Only when they piss me off.”

  “But what about when they don’t piss you off?”

  The question was asked in that earnest-young-woman tone of voice that told Blanche she couldn’t kid her way out of answering it. She thought about Leo and her growing certainty that if she had managed him better, he would never have married Luella. She thought of Stu, and how much easier it was to deal with a man before he saw you naked.

  “I ain’t exactly an expert. I do know that relationships take a lot more work than anybody tells you about. Maybe the younger you are, the harder it is. The relationship is growing and changing and so are you. By the time you think you got things workin’ between the two of you, you look up and one of you is a different person.”

  “But if you love each other, you should be able to grow in your relationship, shouldn’t you?” Tina sounded as though she’d been reading the how-to books.

  Blanche shook her head. “It’s more than a notion trying to love somebody, especially a man. Men say they want love the same as we do, but I ain’t always sure we’re talking about the same thing. Or maybe we don’t know any more about loving than men do. Lots of times when women say love, we mean somebody to take care of us, or to make our lives seem worthwhile—things we ought to be doing for ourselves. Sometimes when men say love, they seem to mean they want to own you, or lock you in the kitchen and maternity ward or tell you what to think.”

  “What I hate are these constant fights,” Tina moaned.

  Blanche shifted from the general to the particular. “Maybe you two need to fight.” She juiced the tomatoes. “Sometimes a good fight or two helps. Clears things out so you can see what’s really going on.”

  Taifa came into the kitchen and announced her need for water. She looked from Blanche to Tina while she filled a glass, as though she’d picked up some tension, but couldn’t tell who it was coming from without some verbal cues. She watched them over the top of her glass as she sipped.

  Tina slumped against the counter. “Our fights are making things worse instead of better.”

  Blanche ran the parsley and the scallions through the food processor, added the tomatoes, and popped the container in the freezer to chill. She was aware of Taifa putting more attention into what she was hearing than what she was doing—a small, sleek, red-brown creature sniffing the wind.

  “Durant wants me to be nice to his mother, to have lunch with her or something. Like she’s going to stop hating the sight of me if I just put out a little more effort! I asked him what about her putting out a little effort? She’s the one who’s color-struck.”

  Taifa’s head jerked up. She looked from Tina to Blanche and back again.

  Tina’s eyes flashed. “So, of course, he had to try to defend her. This was the way she was raised, and didn’t I understand that it was really self-hatred that made her act so stupid about color, and blah, blah, blah.” Tina turned and stared at Blanche, her hands on her hips and her pose challenging. “Does he think I don’t know about slavery and white people’s preference for people who looked like them? I know that’s how it all began. But that was then, and this is now. I told him I’m tired of having to understand why some black people act as racist as some white people! That really pissed him off!”

  Blanche laughed. “Well, I guess I could see how a person could get pissed if you call his mama a racist.” She sliced bread for cheese toast.

  Tina opened her mouth to protest, but Blanche went on speaking.

  “That don’t mean I think you were wrong to say it. Maybe we don’t get nowhere on this color business ’cause nobody’s willing to say it out loud. Decent light-skinned folks don’t want it brought up ’cause they’re afraid they’ll get lumped in with the Veronicas of the world. Us black-black folks don’t bring it up ’cause it hurts more than anything any white person could ever do to us.”

  “What about the rest of us? We're not all clustered at color extremes?” I figure most brown-skinned folks either don’t want to think about it, or are trying to act like all our color hang-ups are disappearing on their own.”

  “Not talking about it hasn’t helped,” Tina said. “My grandmother told me there were black churches you couldn’t join if you were darker than a paper bag! Can you believe that? And what about the light-bright preference at so many black colleges? Some of the so-called black frats and sororities are really sick around color, too, you know.”

  Blanche told her the story she’d heard last year from a social worker friend in New York, about a brown-skinned couple who wanted to adopt a child, but only a child with light skin. Taifa’s recent words rang in her ears as well. She could feel Taifa looking at her, but didn’t turn to face the child.

  “Well, I’m sick of it!” Tina pounded her fist into her open palm, but there were tears at the edge of her voice. She turned her back to Blanche and Taifa.

  Blanche went to Tina and put her hand on Tina’s tense shoulder. This was the part that made her really mad. How can we keep on doing this to each other? Tina leaned back against Blanche’s hand. Blanche began to talk to her in a low voice.

  “By the time I was nine, I was always ready to be laughed at or teased for being so black. For a long time, I didn’t trust nobody, nobody, but my friend, Ardell. You got a good girlfriend?” she asked.

  Yeah, my girl, Karen. We've been tight since grade school. She always has my back.” Tina told her.

  “Good. Women like us need our girlfriends.” Blanche told Tina about the time in grade school when Ardell had helped her tie fire to the butts of some classmates who had changed, “Inky Dinky Spider,” to “Inky Stinky Blanche White.” She’d been surprised that a hardly brown girl like Ardell would feel strongly enough about the issue
of color to stick up for her. She’d understood when she met Miz Maxine, Ardell’s mother. She was light enough to pass for white. She was also the first, and for most of Blanche’s life, the only light-skinned person who talked openly about why some light-skinned people looked down on blacker folks and the privileges that light-skinned people enjoyed because of their skin color. Blanche paused.

  Tina leaned toward Blanche. "Go on," she said. Taifa nodded her head in agreement, even though she wasn't officially in the conversation.

  “When I was in my teens,” Blanche said, “Boys made sure I knew that any girl dark as me was supposed to be an easy lay out of gratitude that they would even look at a girl as black as me.” Taifa took a step toward Blanche. Blanche crossed her arms over her chest. “A light-skinned girl once told me she liked walking with me ’cause it made her look almost white. After that, I figured any light-skinned person who tried to be my friend really wanted to use me in that same way. So I had an attitude. If anybody was going to get their feelings hurt, it wasn’t going to be me. Mama was always telling me there was a princess in Africa who looked just like us. Ardell’s mother kept reminding me there were some light-skinned people who hated color prejudice, too. But neither of them was catching the hell like I was. I was the darkest one in the family.”

  Taifa gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Blanche was careful not to make eye contact with her. The information wouldn’t be half as valuable if Taifa new it was directed at her. “Let’s eat,” Blanche said. Taifa began setting the table without being asked.

  Tina got juice and iced tea from the refrigerator. “Yeah. Like the first boy I ever really liked. As a boyfriend, I mean.” She slammed the refrigerator door with a switch of her hips. “Russell. He was so fine, so fine. We all had a crush on him. I got to work with him on the class play. After practicing in the mirror for weeks, I finally got up the courage to ask him to the party after the play. He said he’d never gone anywhere with a girl as dark as me, so he had to think about it.” Tina set the tea and juice on the table with a gesture so gentle, so careful, it nearly broke Blanche’s heart.

  Blanche could lip-sync it. She saw a chorus of black-skinned women, their mouths all moving to the words of this experience.

  Tina cleared her throat and pushed back her dreads. “I remember thinking, if I was light-skinned, Russell wouldn’t have to think about taking me to the party. I remember looking in the mirror wondering if despite what Mama said, I was really as ugly as so many people tried to make me feel.”

  Another memory they shared. Only the names and places were different. Blanche knew its aftermath: The feeling of being thin as a wafer, as though you could be seen right through; of being not just bruised, but totally crushed, as if words were clubs studded with nails—words that some folks thought went together—black and dirty; black and ugly; black and sneaky; black and stupid; black and lazy; black and easy.

  “But you know it’s not true, don’t you? Not any of it.” Blanche watched Tina’s face for any twitch or shift in her eyes that said she held a doubt.

  Tina bobbed her head up and down. “Definitely.” She laughed a shy laugh. “Most of the time.”

  Blanche arranged bread slices on a cookie sheet. “I didn’t get this color shit really straightened out until I was nearly thirty. This country’s got so many ways to make us feel bad. Like these assless blue-eyed, blond anorexics who are supposed to be the last word in beauty.” Blanche toasted the bread lightly under the grill.

  “Yeah.” Tina added, “It’s everywhere. Notice how you never see really black women as stars in movies made by American black men? I bet if you lined up the wives of the most admired black men in America from all walks of life, very few of them would be our complexion.”

  Blanche laid slices of cheese on the toast, rubbed a cut clove of garlic over the cheese, sprinkled on some paprika, and put them under the grill. “And it don’t ever end. But you do learn, like you have already, that there’s no sense being sick over somebody else’s sickness.” She thought of Leo and other men she’d known who’d made her feel as though she were the finest woman since the first sunrise; she thought of Ardell, Rosalee, Juanita, and all the other women who loved her. “You find people who see the whole you, not parts of you, and love it all. You find you don’t need the other kind. Or the pain.”

  Taifa moved slowly around the table putting spoons beside bowls, her eyes occasionally moving from face to face. When she came close to where Tina was standing she stopped and looked wordlessly up at her.

  Blanche didn’t expect that Taifa understood all that she’d heard. But she’d listened intently. During lunch Deirdre tried to get her interested in a story about a girl at their school who could do magic tricks, but Taifa was only partly present.

  Blanche listened to the chatter, alert for any mention of Faith or Hank or anything that might mean they were upset by one death after another, but it didn’t appear to be an issue.

  Tina answered the phone when it rang. Blanche could tell from the way her shoulders drooped that it wasn’t Durant.

  “It’s the same man who called yesterday. I forgot to tell you. Sorry” She handed the phone to Blanche.

  “It’s Tuesday.” Stu made that fact sound like Christmas. “You did say Tuesday?” he asked when she didn’t respond. “I called yesterday, when I heard about Hank, but you were out. I tried earlier today, too, but no one answered. You OK? About Hank, I mean?

  “I’m OK. Carol and Mattie are both in a bad way, though.”

  “Yeah.” He was silent for a moment, then: “I’ll understand if you want to postpone, but I’ll be damned disappointed.”

  Blanche laughed and told him to hang on. She went to ask Tina if she’d be around to keep an eye on the children.

  “How about 9:30?” she asked him.

  “Really? Great! Great!”

  Blanche smiled at the eagerness in his voice. She was glad Tina was so absorbed in her own business she didn’t ask Blanche how she planned to spend her evening. The children had disappeared by the time Blanche got off the phone.

  “I been thinking about what you said.” Tina told her. “About how it’s not our problem that people are color-struck. I knew about Durant’s mother before I met her. Durant told me she always pushed him toward light-skinned girls. I wonder sometimes if I’m just a way for him to defy her.”

  “If that’s what’s going on, why does Durant care so much whether you and his mother get along? Seems to me, if he wanted to defy her, he’d be happier if you two hated each other.”

  Tina agreed and added: “Well anyway, I’ve decided to do it, to act like she’s the one with the problem. I’ll be nice to her the same way I’d be nice to any other mentally ill person.” She grinned and ran her fingers through her dreads. “I was thinking maybe I’ll bake a cake and invite her over for coffee and cake. That be OK with you?” She looked as though she wasn’t sure she wanted it to be OK.

  “That’s fine, honey. Let me know if I can help.” Blanche didn’t bother to say she thought Tina was spitting in the wind. Some things you had to learn for yourself.

  Blanche washed the dishes and wiped off the stove, counter, and refrigerator. Someone would be coming to clean today. Blanche didn’t want to make any work for her or him. She was eager to meet whoever it would be. She’d yet to see any of the housekeeping staff except from a distance. Her towels had been replenished, her room cleaned while she was out, as if by magic. She was looking forward to getting a worker’s take on this place and these people. Then she’d take a walk, so he or she could do the job the way Blanche liked to do it: on her own, with no interference or so-called supervision. Despite the white bartender and the bellhop, she was surprised when a short, ruddy-faced white woman in her twenties showed up.

  “The name’s Rose.”

  “I’m Blanche.” She stuck out her hand.

  Rose looked both surprised
and suspicious. She took Blanche’s hand but dropped it so quickly she hardly touched it. She gave Blanche a sidelong glance from which a wall sprung up between them. So that’s how it feels from the other side, Blanche thought. She left Rose to do her work. She wondered what kind of stories Rose and the other white help told their families and friends about the black folk who stayed here and ran this place? How were they different from the stories she told about her white employers? She obviously wasn’t going to find out from Rose.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon walking the beach and lolling in a chaise under a tree out back, reading and nodding. By the time a cool breeze roused her, Tina was organizing the children for baths before dinner. They had decided they wanted to eat at the Big House, which suited Blanche just fine, as long as she didn’t have to go. She took herself out on the front porch before she got roped into the bath ritual.

  She watched Durant walking toward the cottage.

  “Hi, Mrs. White. How are you, today?”