On that particular day my mother was lingering at home and it was a nice change from her running out with briefcase in hand. She’d just set a plate of pancakes in the middle of the table when Mrs. Baylor came back into the house with a stack of mail. “This was in the mailbox,” she said, setting it on the sideboard before heading back out.
“Thank you, Mrs. Baylor,” my mother replied. She reached for the stack and placed it next to her. Our father glanced at it without much interest and then proceeded to douse his pancakes with maple syrup. Lily used honey these days, rebelling against a product pretending to be maple syrup without a speck of the real thing in it. That was when I began to think she was easing under Nathan’s influence. Before Nathan, she’d never scrutinized labels on food packaging. But he probably did.
“You know that stuff is fake, right?” she told me as our father passed the bottle my way. They were both looking at me to see what I was going to do. I poured the syrup on my pancakes and smiled at my lying, cheating father. Why did I still want to please him? Maybe so he wouldn’t leave us—for his whore.
I began to feel a shift in the air. Something dark settling over our breakfast table. My mother had been sifting through the mail and placing envelopes on the table next to her after she glanced at them. Then she stopped. She pushed the stack out of the way with her elbow and quickly opened the envelope in her hand. She unfolded the contents and sat there, slowly scanning each page, setting it aside once she’d scrutinized it. She glanced at my father and there was something in that brief look that unnerved me. I felt a storm brewing. I noticed the rise and fall of my chest. A tiny thread of fear began to wind through me. My mother stacked the pages, folded them in thirds, business style, and slipped them back into the envelope.
With her voice cutting through the fragile air, she said very calmly, “What I want to know is why the hell we’re getting a copy of a bill from the Red Lion Hotel and the carbon from your credit card. The bill is for Mr. and Mrs. Robert LaBranche,” she hissed through clenched teeth. My breath quickened. My heart began to pound in my ears.
Lily looked down at her lap, though her eyes were shifting back and forth.
My father, with his silly comb-over, glanced up quickly. He raised his eyebrows as if to pooh-pooh it. “It’s gotta be a mistake,” he said, as if his pronouncement alone should make us all get on board with his lie.
“You think so?” my mother said, slapping the envelope on the edge of the kitchen table. “You think they got your name and credit card by”—she paused and shrugged dramatically—“accident? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He drew his mouth down at the corners, as if puzzled. He shook his head. “It’s a mistake. Somehow it’s a mistake.”
“You’ve said that three times now, and each time you’ve told a barefaced lie.”
“Nobody’s lying here. I don’t know how that hotel got my name and credit card.”
Our mother slapped the credit card slip on the table in front of him. “Well, let me ask you this, you lying sack of mule shit. How in the world did they get your signature?” She angled the credit card carbon so he could see. “And that is your signature.”
Tears began to fill my eyes. This was going to be bad. Even Lily seemed to be sitting on the edge of her chair.
Our father took the carbon from her hand and squinted at it as if there could be some other explanation that had nothing to do with him.
My mother opened her mouth, but no words came out. She looked down at her cup of coffee. She’d just about finished it. She picked it up, drank the last few sips, then stood up and took aim. She hurled the cup toward the sink with a baseball player’s fast, hard pitch.
It shattered, sending china shards all over the sink and floor. That seemed to calm her, I noticed. Though her face was still wild and red and her chignon was not quite holding. Sitting there in her satin robe with her hair uncoiling, she looked like a woman in excruciating pain. She got up and walked out of the room, her robe billowing behind her as if she could open the front door and float away, never to be seen again.
Lily and I stared at the mess on the floor. I started to cry, and Lily was saying, “Sh, sh, sh.” Mrs. Baylor was gone. We’d have to clean it up ourselves. Our father wasn’t going to have anything to do with it. He was already coolly getting up from the kitchen table, as if he was the saner of the two of them, gathering the morning paper, and heading to his home office. His steps were soft and measured, deliberately calm. We heard him open the office door and step inside, and then the awful sound of the click as he turned the lock. It was as loud as thunder.
“Don’t worry. Don’t worry,” Lily said. “It’s going to be okay.” She tugged at my braid and put her forefinger over my trembling mouth. “Let’s clean this up.”
She stooped to pick up the bigger pieces and drop them in the waste can beneath the sink. I got the broom and dustpan from the back porch and proceeded to sweep the fine china pieces into it. When I turned it over into the wastebasket, the small heap sparkled like diamond dust. I stared at it and thought, This is like our family—broken, shattered into dust.
Soon we heard our mother in the hall. I held my breath at the sound of her approach. In one hand she carried her luggage and in the other she already had her car keys. She came to the kitchen door and set the suitcase down. I glanced at it and my bottom lip began to tremble again.
She looked at us, first one, then the other—for what seemed minutes. We waited. I could barely breathe. “I’m going to Aunt Rose in Elsinore,” she said calmly. “I’m not sure for how long.” She turned to me. “You make sure you practice ‘Für Elise’ for your recital next week, and Lily, take care of your sister.”
She must not have known about Nathan. Otherwise she would have added, And you leave Mrs. Baylor’s son alone.
With that, she was gone. I sat back down at the table. What were we going to do? Lily put away the milk and juice, loaded the dishwasher, and wiped the counters and table.
I watched until she looked over at me. “Go practice your piano.”
I started to get up, then I sat back down and crossed my arms. “I’ve decided that I don’t want to be in the recital.”
“And I’ve decided you do.”
“Mom’s gone. Daddy doesn’t care. He probably doesn’t even know I take piano lessons.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And I think you should not go to Spelman. I think you should stay here so you can be with Nathan.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know where you get your crazy ideas. We’re just friends. That’s all it is. Why does everyone want to make it more than that? Anyway, he’s going back up to Berkeley.”
“Can’t you go to that school, too? You got in.” I pictured going there by train and her picking me up and taking me sightseeing. A new sight every month—or maybe every other month.
“Too late,” she said.
“Anyway, there won’t be anyone at the recital,” I said, getting back to the subject. “Daddy will probably just drop me off and pick me up.’’
“Nonsense. I’ll get Nathan to take us.”
The best part about “Für Elise” was the two dots above the u. It made it look extra-interesting and complicated, which made me seem smart. The beginning was easy. I could sail through it. It was after the change that it began to get hard, and Mrs. Virgil would curl her lip slowly as if there was a bad smell in the air. She’d blink and her nostrils would widen. Then she’d close her eyes and hold her head in a way that made it seem as if she was trying to listen for a mysterious sound, something coming up through the carpeted floor beneath the piano, maybe.
Then she’d start slowly shaking her head. “Go back to the change,” she’d say, as if one round of torture wasn’t enough. She was listening for something, listening for exactly where I’d started to go wrong.
I would have to ready myself for when she’d hold up her hand and say, “Right there. Stop right there.” I�
��d sit in fear, knowing that any minute she would start spraying, and there would be the risk of her spittle landing on my cheek. Piano lessons with Mrs. Virgil were always full of small fears.
“Have you been practicing?” she would ask at some point, and look over her glasses, ready to catch me in a lie.
“Kind of,” I usually said, trying to remember when I’d practiced last.
“What does that mean?”
“I could practice more.”
“Precisely,” she’d say, and I quickly regretted the c and the s in that word.
So I needed to practice before my last lesson before the recital. The recital my mother planned to miss. And I still needed to memorize my lines for the tryouts. Because I was going to be Olivia. There was no doubt in my mind. I wanted it very badly and I figured that should help me get it. Besides, I was going to be the best. I was sure I would be the only one who would not have to read lines from the script—the only one who could actually act them out from memory.
Later, Jennifer and I sat on the grass in Jennifer’s backyard under her Chinese elm with our scripts on our laps and me pretending that nothing was going on in my house and everything was just fine. We were doing the scene where Julie and her “best friend,” Sandy, are in the cafeteria ragging on just about everyone.
Julie: Did you see that sweater Marcia had on this morning? I happen to know she rescued it from one of those bargain tables at Dillard’s. I saw it Saturday. It had been marked down twice. I picked it up as a joke, thinking, who would buy this rag?
Julie and Sandy together: Marcia!
Olivia: Did I mention that Julie Jenson talks about everyone behind her back? Yes, even her best friend, Sandy. She told Evie Parks, who told Linda Merkin, who told Iris Jamison, who told me that Sandy’s brother had been picked up for drunk driving and the whole family is just a bunch of drunks. She said this about her own best friend. Talk about two-faced!
Jennifer stopped me. “You’re saying, ‘Talk about two-faced!’ I think you should say, ‘Talk about two-faced!’”
I thought about this. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Just try it.”
But the words wouldn’t come out. My mind drifted and then I forgot what I was supposed to do. It felt like I was going to cry—right there in Jennifer’s backyard.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at me closely.
“Nothing,” I told her. “Nothing at all.”
CHAPTER 15
Recital
* * *
“I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING to wear,” I said to Lily the day before the recital. “And my hair is ugly.”
She looked up from The House of Mirth. “We’ll get some money from Daddy. When he’s feeling guilty, he just hands it over.”
Lily said we’d take Daddy’s car and go down to May Company or Broadway Department Store later that day, then she’d take me to the beauty school to get my hair washed and straightened. Because it was long and thick and bushy, they would charge a dollar more. When my mother didn’t feel like doing it herself, that’s where we went.
It was easier shopping with my sister. She didn’t have to stop at the makeup counter and get powder mixed. She didn’t even wear face powder. Nor did she have to slip her hand into samples of hosiery to choose just the right color. We went straight to the juniors’ department on the second floor of Broadway Department Store, where she scanned the racks to see what was there before sliding clothes along them one after another.
“This is cute,” I said, holding up a red velvet drop waist.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sophie. You can’t wear that in July.”
“Why?”
“It’s velvet and red and they’re probably just trying to get rid of it because they couldn’t sell it at the end of last winter when they were making room for the spring stuff.”
“Oh.” I put it back, realizing it had lost some of its luster. Then I saw the same style in lime-green cotton with tiny white polka dots. “How about this?”
“Hold it up to yourself,” Lily said.
I did as she said. She studied it for a few seconds. “That’ll do.” She took it out of my hand and headed for the register. Daddy had given her twelve dollars to buy me a new dress, and the lime green one was eleven.
Soon we were on to the beauty school to get my hair washed and pressed. I was looking forward to two things. The first was laying my head back in the special sink with the curve for my neck. That was so much better than kneeling on a chair at the kitchen sink, where shampoo would almost always get in my eyes. And while the beauty school lady was straightening my hair, I got to look at the big bank of mirrors and watch it transform from kinky to straight. Like my mother, she used a pressing cloth, and when she was finished, my hair was as straight as a white person’s. I got to see other people’s hair go from nappy to straight, too. Some had hair that was thick and bushy, others, short and hardly there. After my hair was straightened, I had curls put in with a hot curler.
The curls had to cool or they wouldn’t stay. Ladies with rows of sausage curls sat side by side in chairs flipping through old Ebony and Jet magazines while their hair cooled. I loved going to the beauty school.
Lily went off somewhere but returned just as the lady was combing my newly straightened and curled hair into a style. As we were walking out the door, Lily studied my new hairdo—which was half up in a barrette, with the rest hanging down my back.
“You’re going to have to be careful,” she said, leading the way back to Daddy’s car. “No running around and sweating it out, and tonight I have to roll it up for you. I’ll use sponge rollers so you can sleep on them.”
“Has Mom called?” I asked as we slid into the front seat. I’d rehearsed the question so I wouldn’t sound like I was about to cry. The night before, I’d expected her to call. To see how we were doing. I’d waited the whole evening for the telephone to ring, and now I held my breath for Lily’s answer.
“I didn’t go home,” Lily said with a closed expression that let me know not to question her about where’d she been for the last two hours. “Don’t expect her to call, though. She’s making a point.” She started the car and pulled away from the curb.
But I had expected her to call and reassure me and tell me things like, “I’m only going to be gone for a little while—just until I feel better.”
“What’s Daddy doing?” I asked.
“Daddy’s not home. Someone picked him up before we left.”
“His whore?”
“Don’t use that word,” Lily said. She turned the car up Forty-Eighth, using only one hand to steer the wheel in a cool way like on television. I liked to see Lily drive. She made it seem casual and easy. “No. One of his poker buddies.”
“They’re probably all in it together,” I said.
“In what?”
“Having whores.”
“I told you not to use that word.”
Nathan picked us up the next day. It was strange seeing Mrs. Baylor’s son not in his painting clothes but in an actual suit, and Lily acting as if she’d known him all her life. It was all upside down. I kept looking from one to the other from my place in the middle of the back seat.
Before he started the car, he turned around and peered at me for a moment. I half dissolved under his handsome gaze. “So who else is in this recital?”
“Mrs. Virgil’s students and Miss Miller’s.”
“So which one is your teacher?”
“Mrs. Virgil.”
“Do you know all of the students of both teachers?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Kinda.”
“Come on, Nathan,” Lily said.
He looked at my sister and smiled as if he loved her. “Hold on,” he said. “Now—out of all the students, which one is the best?”
“This girl who lives down the street. Jilly Baker,” I mumbled, hating to admit it.
“Wow,” he said. “I know all about the Bakers.” He laughed an
d Lily poked him in the ribs. He turned to my sister. “Yeah, you terrorized that little Baker girl. Which one was that? I’ma have to call the po-leese on you.”
“Then I’ma have to tell the po-leese you been smokin’ weed,” Lily stated, and they both laughed and laughed. Lily looked over her shoulder at me. “You know I’m kidding, right?”
I frowned. Wasn’t weed marijuana? And didn’t it lead to more serious drugs? Lily had already told me about the film they’d shown all the twelfth graders about how one puff could make you break open a glass Coca-Cola bottle and drink from the jagged edge, not even caring about cutting your mouth.
“Okay, so this Jilly has your teacher?” Nathan went on.
“No, she has Miss Miller, the white teacher.”
“Yeah, that figures.” He nodded slowly with mischief in his eyes. I loved it.
“What are you going to do?” Lily asked.
Nathan smiled and shrugged. “I’m just going to make faces at her when they introduce her—throw her off her game.”
“People will see you,” Lily said.
“No, they’ll be looking at her.”
My sister was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “You can’t do that.”
Nathan looked at her, seemingly surprised. “I can’t?”
They glanced at each other sideways and smiled. And that’s when I realized that I’d settle for nothing less. I wanted someone who would look at me like that and accept my wishes with a smile on his face.
When we reached the school auditorium and got out of the car, Nathan said, “Hey, Sophie, do you want me to teach you the Ghanaian handshake for good luck?”
“Yes,” I said eagerly.
“Well, it’s not really for good luck,” he said. “But it might give you confidence.”
“What’s Ghanaian?”
“Anything and anyone from Ghana.”
It All Comes Down to This Page 12
