Just then I heard the front door open and close. I touched the picture in the pocket of my pedal pushers and stood up at the sound of Mrs. Baylor’s approaching steps. She must have forgotten something. She went into her room and rummaged around in there for a bit while I tried to decide if I could slip out of Daddy’s office quietly. But then she was shuffling down the hall and opening the door and giving me a hard look.
“Now what do you think you doin’? I bet your daddy has told you a million times to stay out of his office. So explain yourself, if you please.”
“I was looking for carbon paper,” I lied, and I didn’t even know where that lie came from—it just tumbled out of my mouth easily. Was I turning into a liar?
“What you be wantin’ carbon paper for?”
“For my book—to have an extra copy as I’m writing.”
She was silent as she slowly tilted her head to the side. “You telling the truth?”
“Yes,” I said weakly.
She watched me some more and seemed to be waiting. “Well, go on,” she finally said. “Get your carbon, if that’s what you came for.”
I looked through the rest of the desk drawers, knowing there was no carbon paper in any of them. I stood up and shrugged. “I guess he doesn’t have any,” I said.
“Now, let me ask you something,” she began. She squinted at me. “Something I want to know.”
“Yes?”
“I been watching you. And that sister of yours—the one who thinks she’s queen of England. Now I seen she got some colored friends. But what about you? Why you don’t have any colored friends?”
I stood there, confused. It was like when she told me the Africans would kill me if I ever went to Africa. I couldn’t think of anything to say then, either.
“I didn’t have that many friends at my old school,” I finally said. “I had acquaintances, but just a few. There were lots of colored kids at my old school but I just wasn’t one of the popular ones. Not many people liked me.”
“And how that happen?”
“I don’t really know. I guess people thought of me as too bookish. I guess.”
“Hmm,” she said.
I couldn’t tell what she thought of this. “I haven’t had a chance to meet anyone at my new school because it hasn’t started yet.”
“There going to be some Negroes at this new school?”
“Probably not that many.”
“You try and make you some friends of your own kind. Then you all can understand each other.”
I didn’t get it. I understood Jennifer perfectly well, and she understood me. “Okay,” I said. Though I didn’t know how I’d go about doing that, actually.
“Hmm.” It was a quick, short sound. “I’m not surprised you don’t have but one friend.”
I felt my face grow warm. Mrs. Baylor watched me as I closed the bottom desk drawer and left the room. I wanted to put away my picture of Minerva.
We lived in a split-level house with the den, my daddy’s home office, and Mrs. Baylor’s room and bath on the upper level. Lily’s and my room and bath and our parents’ room and bath were on the main level—as well as the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Split level didn’t seem like anything you’d see in a movie or read about in a book. That’s why I wished I lived in a house like Jennifer’s. A house that looked like it could be in a book or a movie. Two stories, with a staircase you could see from the front door.
I skipped down the few steps leading to the foyer and crossed the hall toward my room. I shut the door behind me and pulled the picture out of my pocket. For a while, I just stared at it and smiled. I have this, I thought. Little Minerva, with my daddy’s faintly square jaw—but on her, the squareness was softer. Little Minerva, in her cheap-looking dress. The picture was black and white—I guess they didn’t have color photographs then. I imagined her dress to be a pale, listless yellow from too many washings. It was sleeveless, with ruffles at the shoulder and a thin black velvet ribbon under the collar tied in a bow.
There she was, sitting with one forearm on the table, her other hand cupping her chin—and a shy smile revealing tiny baby teeth that looked like little white kernels of corn. Big brown eyes, but nearly lashless. Her hair was carelessly gathered up and tied with a bow that drooped sadly. You could tell her mother—whoever she was—had tried. That this was meant to be a picture that would make her seem loved and cared for. Poor little Minerva, the outside child, raised by her mother alone.
This is what Lily had told me: One day, Minerva’s mother brought little Minerva to the house to show her to our grandmother. Grandma Nell had her stand at the end of the walkway and take off the girl’s bonnet so she could scrutinize her and decide that she was indeed Grandpa Willis’s outside child. She had Minerva’s mother take her around the back so Rosie, their housekeeper, could give the girl a glass of lemonade. I don’t know what Grandpa Willis told Grandma Nell—but they stayed together.
Lily recounted this dramatic scene for me just as she’d heard our father recount it to our mother. I thought about it over and over until I felt I knew this little girl. I knew her heart.
Then I thought of something else. What if my daddy had one of those kinds of children? I frowned and pictured a lady bringing the little outside child over to show my mother. Then I put that thought out of my head and slipped the picture under my pajamas in my top dresser drawer. Over the next few days, I thought about it like a secret. Sometimes I took the picture out and just looked at Minerva, imagining the sadness surrounding her existence.
I was going to climb into her brain and heart and write what was there. I was going to put away that other stupid novel I was writing, about two teenage French sleuths, Fleur and Lizeth (what was I thinking?), and begin my new novel about Minerva.
I thought of my plot. I was going to make it so that everybody knew how she came about and no one wanted to be friends with her because she was a symbol of disgrace. Through no fault of her own, of course, since she didn’t make herself. I’d write about the cruelty of the parents who wouldn’t let their children play with her. And how kids would whisper about her behind their hands. And just generally about the sadness of everything. I was going to make it really sad. Poor little Minerva. I almost had myself in tears. Yet—there was a flutter of excitement in my stomach.
The doorbell rang. Mrs. Virgil, with all her moles and her music and her juicy mouth, was on the porch waiting for me to let her in.
She nodded at me, said my name like a question—“Sophie?”—then bustled past with her handbag over her arm. She stopped in the middle of the living room, looked back at me as she placed her bag on the coffee table, and said, “Let’s start with the proper way to sit at the piano.” She crossed her arms and waited. “Show me how I told you to sit on the piano bench,” she instructed right off. “Did you practice?”
I sat down slowly. “Yes,” I said, because right after my last lesson, I did practice—for a minute or two.
“Why do you need the right posture at the piano?”
“For comfort?” I guessed.
She looked at me then and her mouth shrank to a grim line as she drew her lips in.
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “What else?”
It came to me miraculously. “To avoid injury?” I asked.
“Okay. Let’s see. Show me.”
I pulled the bench forward, then stopped as I heard her loud sigh. “That’s too far forward and you’re too far back on the bench. Sit on the edge like I told you. Engage those core muscles.”
I did as she said. Except for the engaging part, because I didn’t exactly know what she meant by core muscles.
“How should you rest your fingers on the keys?” she fired at me.
I looked at my hands and centered them according to the two black keys in the middle of the keyboard.
She tapped my forearms with a pencil that was suddenly in her hand. I raised them a bit. She rested the penc
il on one of my arms and it slid off. She cocked her head and looked at me. Then she shook her head again—slowly. “That pencil would have stayed put if your arm had been horizontal.”
I raised my elbows a bit more.
“Too late.” She sat on the bench beside me. I wanted to get up, but I was trapped.
She turned to me while I stared straight ahead. “You know what your problem is?”
I shook my head.
She looked around. “You’re spoiled.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You won’t get anywhere being so spoiled.”
I didn’t like being called spoiled. She had no reason to say that. I did nearly everything I was supposed to do—well, most of the time. So I was the opposite of spoiled.
Then she asked, “How are you in school? Do you pay attention? Do your work?”
Now I was insulted. Of course I paid attention and did my work. Schoolwork was easy for me. I kept those thoughts to myself.
“I think you’re just spoiled.”
I wiped my cheek. I couldn’t wait for the lesson to be over.
CHAPTER 5
She Got It!
* * *
“I GOT IT,” Lily said. She sat on the end of her bed. “I got it.” She shook her head with disbelief.
I put my book down. I’d been reading since Mrs. Virgil left. And thinking about the new book I was going to write. And putting off starting it. I could begin with Minerva’s mother telling her she was an outside child or maybe her just finding out, or maybe some kids telling her in a mean way. There were so many ways to go. I thought about the look on Minerva’s face. I thought of her walking by her father’s house and seeing his “real” children (my father’s little brothers) playing in the front yard.
“I got it,” Lily said again in a near whisper.
“You got hired?”
“They don’t know I’m colored,” Lily went on. “Mrs. Singer, the owner, had spoken to someone who was supposed to come for an interview. Someone who was the neighbor of someone who goes to Mrs. Singer’s cousin’s temple. Someone Jewish. But she didn’t remember the person’s name. I guess that person just changed her mind and didn’t show up. Somehow she thought I was her. Can you believe it? What luck!”
Lily sat up a little straighter. “They think I’m the Jewish person.” Her eyes widened at the thought. She leaned over to check herself in the vanity mirror. She pushed her hair back, swiveling her head from side to side, but kept her eyes focused on her face.
“You don’t look Jewish, to me,” I said, thinking of Melissa Miller in sixth grade. Melissa was olive skinned with long lashes and straight dark eyebrows like Audrey Hepburn’s. When I thought Jewish, she was the person who came to mind. Melissa with her cheeks dusted with fine, pale brown hairs that could be seen only in the light of the sun. I was fascinated by this and searched for the same tiny hairs on my own face. But mine was smooth and bald as an apple.
“You could get into trouble,” I added.
Lily looked at me for a couple of beats. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I could.”
“And what if your friends come in to see you?”
“It’s a free country. White people can have colored friends.” She piled her hair on top of her head and lifted her chin. She squinted at her reflection and took a long, thoughtful breath. “I might lighten my hair some more. You know what? The owner, Mrs. Singer—she even asked which temple I attend. I only know the one on La Cienega Boulevard, Temple Beth Am. So I told her that and she seemed pleased.”
I gasped. “You shouldn’t have done that, Lily.”
“Why not? I can just read up on some stuff, learn about the religion, I guess.”
“You can’t pretend to be a religion you’re not.”
“Why not?”
“I think that would be a sin.”
“Oh, you’re so serious.” She trotted over and gave me one of her triumphant hugs.
“Don’t be silly.” She turned toward the mirror again and ran both hands through her hair. She angled her face this way and that. “I think if you look at me really fast, I could look Jewish.”
But what did Jewish look like? I thought about Melissa Miller again. She looked way different from Michael Foxman, who was also Jewish and had red hair and red eyelashes. He was in love with Melissa Miller. In sixth grade he told me glumly, as we stood in line in front of the auditorium door, waiting to go in for Friday square dancing, that I was plain.
It was startling to me. To be summed up like that. “Now, Melissa is pretty,” he went on. A few days later, I studied her while we washed paintbrushes in the janitor’s room. I studied her and all that made her pretty because I agreed with Michael Foxman. He had a keen eye.
We were also in the janitor’s room rinsing paintbrushes the next Friday when Melissa told me how a woman got pregnant. It was the grossest thing I’d ever heard, and I didn’t believe it for a second. Grandma Nanny, my mother’s mother who lived in North Carolina, had nine children! She would have never done such a thing nine times, nor my mother two times. I was pretty certain of that. I didn’t take this new information to my mother or even to Lily. I just continued to feel comfortable in the way I saw things. I knew Melissa was wrong.
Of course, she turned out to be right.
“Maybe I’ll even start wearing a Star of David,” Lily said.
“If you do that, that’s like making fun of a person’s religion. Like you’re just using the religion.”
“You’re so serious,” she said again. “How’d you get so serious? I’m only joking.”
I didn’t believe her. It would be like the time Lily pretended to be Catholic because this boy she liked was Catholic and she thought maybe she could see him if she went to his church. She dragged me with her.
Lily did everything just like the Catholics, especially when she spotted him walking up the church’s steps between his mother and father behind us. She’d read up on what to do, so when I tried to pull open that big, tall, heavy door to the actual church part, she yanked me back to do the sign of the cross with the holy water. Then she stepped ahead of me to lead the way. I watched her kneel on one leg at the end of the pew, and she nodded for me to do the same. She crossed her chest with such a solemn look on her face, I thought she might be suddenly sincere.
When it came time for Communion—when you had to stand and go to the place up front to kneel and receive the wafer—Lily stood, bowed her head, and, with her hands clasped at her chest, walked up the aisle in a line with all the other real Catholics. I held my breath. She knelt down as if there was nothing wrong with it, then opened her mouth to get that wafer put on her tongue like everyone else. Then she stood and walked back, making her face look just like that of an angel, which got my heart beating fast with fear. My sister would surely be going to hell for making fun of someone else’s religion—all to make a boy notice her.
And now she would be making fun of the Jewish religion by pretending to be Jewish and saying she was a member of Temple Beth Am on La Cienega. And she didn’t seem the least bit worried about it.
“I’m not going to pretend to be Jewish,” she said later. “I’m just not going to say I’m not.”
CHAPTER 6
Mrs. Baylor’s Room
* * *
THE MANSFIELDS WERE coming for dinner. We had them over once a year. I’d learned they were coming when our mother started fussing about the menu the week before. Then at the breakfast table (one of the few times we all sat together) she suddenly changed her mind and asked Daddy if he thought baked chicken and asparagus and stuffed potatoes would be good.
He was reading the newspaper. “Fine by me,” he said from behind it. Then she asked him if lamb would be better. That’s when he lowered the paper and stared at her. She stared back. “Lamb is fine, Nina,” he said.
Lily was annoyed. They were coming the evening of the Fourth of July and that meant Lily would have to cut short her fun at the beach with he
r friends and get back in time for dinner. Though it didn’t matter to me, I wasn’t sure why we were having them to dinner on a holiday.
The Mansfields were bringing their daughter, Robin. I didn’t like her. And their son, Dale. He had been Lily’s escort to the cotillion last year. Robin’s eyes were blue like a robin’s egg, and she was quite taken with her own “good hair.” Her long braid ended with a finger-size curl that looked like spun silk. Mine ended in a clump of sagebrush. She pointed this out to me once. “Your mother has to straighten your hair,” she said, her eyes darting around my hairline. “My mother just has to put water and Wildroot Cream Oil on mine.” Then she smiled as if it was all she could do to keep from laughing at the frizz at the end of my braid.
That was when I was ten, when her mother first brought her over so we could get acquainted.
“You want to play with Barbies?” she had asked, eyeing my Barbie dream house on the table in the corner beside my bed.
I looked at it as if I’d forgotten it was there. “Oh, I don’t play with that anymore. It’s for babies,” I said, delighting in her look of disappointment. “Let’s go outside and play with Oscar.” I was counting on her being timid around Oscar, too afraid he’d jump or slobber on her to enjoy herself.
So they were coming. The Mansfields. With that stuck-up Robin. Dale Mansfield was at Dartmouth now. He was a distant memory to Lily. Though I’d heard her badmouthing him to Lydia.
“Who’d be willing to do all that? He’d already been an escort twice. His junior year and senior year.”
I was sitting in the dining room with the door open, supposedly reading. Lily and Lydia were out on the patio passing a cigarette back and forth between them. It was an early evening in May, and the cotillion experience was long behind her, but Lily was sharing, with her new friend, the travails of her past life. Our mother wasn’t at home—nor our father. And Shirley didn’t care if Lily smoked.
It All Comes Down to This Page 4
