I looked at her quizzically. Why was she inviting me to lunch out of the clear blue? I thought of Jennifer at the beach with Linda Cruz. “Okay.”
Our mother had a headache and was not going anywhere (she had those more and more since our father had moved out). Lily decided to borrow the car on the pretext of helping her out by doing the grocery shopping.
Our mother hated grocery shopping. It was a chore to her. I liked it, because everything that was put in the cart had a future in our kitchen, and I greeted most of the food with anticipation. Lily bought lemon cake mix—and I planned to bake up a lemon cake. There were Popsicles for the really hot days when everyone ran out to buy ice cream. There was root beer for future floats, and chocolate chips for future chocolate chip cookies. I loved selecting things to pile into the cart.
Lily offering to do the grocery shopping was our ace today for using the car. I knew she planned to drive around a bit first. Just for the thrill of it. We drove down Santa Barbara Avenue until it ran out at Central.
“Let’s park and walk around,” Lily said.
“You just want to do that because you might run into Nathan.”
“I no longer care about him.” She turned down Central.
“I think you do.”
She lowered her voice. “Well, he no longer cares about me.”
“He does. I can tell.”
“How do you know?” Her voice was full of caution as she kept her eyes on the car in front of us.
“Because when you leave for work, I watch him out the window.”
I could see her struggle against a smile. “What does he do?”
“He looks at you until you get to Olympiad and turn the corner.”
She drew in her lips and I could tell she was pleased.
“Does he look at me steadily, or does he paint a bit and then look at me?”
“He looks at you almost steadily. Sometimes he’ll paint a bit.”
“What’s the expression on his face?”
“Sad. Plus he’s all the time asking about you,” I added.
Lily bit her lip. Her face was full of guarded hope. Then she sighed. “Doesn’t matter. We’re finished.”
“I thought you were just friends, anyway.”
“We’re finished as friends.” She squinted as if determined to strengthen her resolve about this. She had an Anne of Green Gables kind of grit. “So he watches me until I’m out of sight?”
“Yes.”
We’d have to eat lunch first, and then do the grocery shopping. As if it had been her intention all along, she pulled up into the parking lot in front of Prides. I glanced at Lily and she looked like she knew what she was doing. “Daddy’s stomping ground,” Lily said. “His watering hole.”
“No. The Flying Fox is his watering hole,” I said. “I don’t want to go in if he’s there.”
“He’s not. I heard Mom tell her friend Mabel he’s in court this morning.”
“How does Mom know?”
“They talk on the phone almost every day. Anyway, he’ll be back.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s way more fun to sneak around than to be out in the open in a cheap apartment.”
“Mom shouldn’t take him back,” I said.
“And yet she probably will.” I looked at Lily quickly to see the expression on her face. I wanted to know what she thought about this. But her face was unreadable. She just got out of the car and led the way to Prides.
“Daddy’s girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, sometimes eats lunch here. She works in the dentist’s office on Stocker—in the building where Daddy has his office.”
“So that’s how they met, probably.”
“Uh-huh.”
The hostess led us to a booth next to the window that looked out onto the parking lot. We were settling in, examining our menus (I knew I wanted French toast even though we were there for lunch), when Lily said, “Here she comes.” We both looked out the window to see.
The bell over the door chimed and the woman—tall, casually dressed in a straight navy skirt and white blouse—pushed through it. She looked like a stewardess without the jaunty little cap. She went directly to the booth across from us and slid into it as if it belonged to her. That was her—the woman I’d seen. That Paula person.
“Hey, Paula,” the hostess called out to her. “Coffee, right?”
“And a grilled cheese, please.”
“Coming up.”
We stared. Then Lily went back to her menu, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The woman looked confident, sophisticated. Fair skinned with straight jet-black hair pulled into a tight, severe bun. I thought of the word chic.
I didn’t like her. She looked hard and it seemed to me she was trying to cover it up with a lot of smiling. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse and shook one out. Then she lit it and took in a long drag and looked around. Her eyes landed on us and slid right off.
She checked us again, and this time she frowned as if trying to place us. Maybe my daddy had shown her a picture of Lily and me. Maybe a family photo sat on his desk.
I saw something dawn on her suddenly, and then felt her sneaking a second look. I buried my head in the big glossy menu and nudged Lily under the table with my foot. She ignored me.
Lily took the bottle of ketchup off the table and placed it on the seat beside her. Then she got up and walked right over to Paula.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “Are you going to be needing that ketchup?”
Paula looked down at the little collection of condiments and said, “No, honey, it’s all yours.”
She was so different from our mother. Pretty, but with an edge—like maybe she didn’t have a very nice background. Maybe she’d grown up in an orphanage. Or in a foster home. I couldn’t see what my daddy saw in her. Our mother was prettier and didn’t look like she’d grown up in an orphanage.
Paula plucked a wad of gum out of her mouth and mashed it into the ashtray. She took in another drag and gazed out the window.
“You think she’s waiting on Daddy?” I whispered to Lily.
“He told Mom they were finished.”
“How do you know?”
“I have my ways.”
I couldn’t imagine what they were, but I believed her. I looked over at Paula again. My mother was way better.
We ate, shopped, then headed home with the groceries. “You want to go by the community center and check the results?” Lily asked.
“Without Jennifer?”
“Do you need Jennifer to check the results?”
So we drove to the community center, where I expected the list to be posted on the glass-encased message board in the foyer. I pulled the heavy door open, stepped inside, and looked around. The facility seemed deserted. But soon I heard voices coming from the multipurpose room.
I needed to hurry up before someone saw me. I looked back at Lily in the idling car. She made a motion with her hand, urging me to get on with it. I studied the message board and soon found what I had come to see. There was no need to run my finger slowly down the cast list. I could see that my name was not on it. My name, Sophie LaBranche, was absent. I knew then that I had never even been considered. The role of Olivia—an important role, central to the play—was never mine. All that work, all that memorizing and patting myself on the back for having memorized not only my own lines but also the lines of everyone else, turned out to be for nothing. I had thought that would be my ace, my ticket to getting the part. My ticket for sailing right over all the competition, or passing them until they were just a dot in my rearview mirror. I’d been certain, even though I knew I had the disadvantage of being colored—being black. I’d fooled myself into thinking that if I was outstanding enough, it would make up for everything.
I was wrong.
Lily could see it. When I returned to the car, she didn’t even have to ask. I climbed in and leaned my head against the window. There was a charged silence be
tween us. She slowly shook her head. “Oh, what I would like to do to those people,” she said. “Let me at ’em.”
“Jennifer got the role of Julie,” I said.
Lily looked over at me but said nothing more.
“Carla is Olivia. And she didn’t even know her lines,” I added.
I saw Lily’s jaw clench.
CHAPTER 23
Watts Rebellion
* * *
I WAS AT THE PIANO, practicing the rough patches of “Für Elise.” My mother had fresh criticism after watching me stumble through it at the recital.
Now she sat on the sofa in her khaki slacks, her legs stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. She was thumbing through a Harper’s Bazaar—looking as cool without my father as she had when she was with him. She was an expert in looking cool and sophisticated. Occasionally she stopped and squinted and aimed her ear at the piano as if this helped her to listen better. Then she said, “Do that part again. It doesn’t flow. You don’t sound confident—like that other little girl. That little white girl from down the street.”
I looked at my mother but didn’t say anything. I’d heard Mrs. Baylor tell her that I didn’t get the part in the play I’d tried out for, and I’d heard my mother say, “There’ll be other plays.” She didn’t think beyond that. She didn’t think of what it was like for me when Jennifer came bounding over after she got back from the beach so we could go to the community center to check the cast list. And my mother didn’t think about how it felt when I told Jennifer I’d already seen the results and that I wasn’t cast but that she got the part of Julie, and how it felt to see Jennifer’s guarded happiness about getting something she’d planned to get.
It was almost time to watch Gidget on television, so I was hoping this practicing torture would end soon and I could take my misery to the den. Unfortunately, my mother looked comfortable there on the sofa, as if she was settling in for a long evening of critiquing.
Our telephone rang. We both glanced at it. Lately when the phone rang I immediately recalled the words Do. Not. Have. Your. Whore. Call. This. House! And I felt funny, a little skittish about answering it. What if it was someone who just wanted to hear my mother’s voice? Like Paula Morrisy, who wouldn’t say anything—but would just listen.
Mrs. Baylor picked up the phone in the kitchen and the call turned out to be for her.
We could hear her side of the conversation. She was talking to her neighbor Miss Cissy, who was calling to tell her about something happening right down the street from Mrs. Baylor’s house. A big commotion, with police and everything.
Eventually she got off the phone and came in to tell us what Miss Cissy had said.
It seemed someone they all knew from the neighborhood, Marquette Frye, had been pulled over for drunk driving. Miss Cissy claimed he wasn’t driving while drunk. He was just making his car swerve to the beat of “Quicksand” by Martha and the Vandellas. Kids were all the time doing that. The song was real popular.
“Marquette Frye was just feeling happy. That’s all,” Mrs. Baylor said. “His brother, who was in the car, had gotten out of the Air Force and wouldn’t be going to Vietnam—something to be happy about. Right? Any fool could see that.”
While we listened, my mother slowly shook her head and rolled her eyes as though it was much ado about nothing (one of her favorite phrases). But according to Miss Cissy, when the officer had Marquette get out of the car, that boy had no problem walking a straight line. He showed the officer that he was not drunk. But the officer was determined. He just wanted someone to arrest.
So he was going to arrest him anyway and have the car towed. He’d made up his mind. Just because he could. On general principle.
“Probably not a bad idea,” my mother said under her breath, and I looked at her sharply. Why did she say things like that? Things critical of colored people? Like when she said, “Negroes and flies. The more she was around Negroes, the more she liked flies.” How could she say that? How could she even think it?
I looked away and continued to listen to Mrs. Baylor, but I imagined Miss Cissy giving her account in a really dramatic way:
So someone ran to get Marquette’s mother so she could take the car. But the police wouldn’t let her. Then this big argument started up. A big argument. And people who were gathering around and seeing these things were saying, “Just let his brother go. He wasn’t driving!” And “Why can’t he take the car?” They know it’s gonna be hard to get that car out of impound. All the fees adding up and stuff. Soon more people were standing around and looking and voicing their opinions—to the police. “It’s a damn free country!” someone shouted. “Itn’t it?”
I could hear that person shouting, “Itn’t it?” I felt a small thrill saying those words under my breath.
Mrs. Baylor paused from her reporting to say, “Wonder if Nathan’s home.” I looked at my mother. She was checking her nails. Mrs. Baylor shook her head and continued with Miss Cissy’s account.
“Then someone’s mother got manhandled,” Mrs. Baylor reported. “Someone’s mother! Cissy’s thinkin’ she seen it was that boy, Marquette’s, mother. Maybe the police thought she was gettin’ too close. You know how afraid they are of colored people. Yes, sir—that’s why they always killing us. That’s why the LAPD recruits their officers from the Ku Klux Klan—or some other Nazi group. You know that’s the truth.” Lily came in from work and listened quietly to the rest of Mrs. Baylor’s secondhand account.
She glanced at Lily and went on. “Cissy said that the people who’d gathered around didn’t like how that woman got manhandled and they began to shout things. Things they been holding inside themselves—for a long time, I believe. The police started getting scared and hurried to call for more backup on their radios.
“Oh . . . it was just brewing. Brewing and spilling over. Miss Cissy and me, we both been thinkin’ that. Someone threw something—a rock, I think, at one of the police. They were shouting curses at those ofays. And Cissy says the police—their faces were so red. Then, some fool set a car on fire. Why’d he wanna go and do something like that? Makin’ people think they could just set fires and stuff. Whoa! That just started everything. People just thinkin’, I might as well tear everything down. That’s what Cissy told me.”
By now Mrs. Baylor was breathing fast. This was happening close to her house. “So the cops called for the fire truck—and more police.” Mrs. Baylor took a hankie out of her dress pocket and wiped her face.
I couldn’t believe all of this was happening right down the street from where Mrs. Baylor lived. Lily didn’t say anything, but she disappeared into her room, probably to get on the phone with Lydia. Maybe even to try to get in touch with Nathan—if they were back together.
“Do you think you need to go home, Mrs. Baylor?” my mother asked. “I can drive you. I’m not afraid of them folks.” I didn’t know if she was talking about the colored people or the police.
Mrs. Baylor shook her head. “No, no. It’s best that I stay here until things calm down.”
My mother shrugged and turned to me. “Start from the beginning,” she said, and the piano-playing critique resumed.
Later, after I was finally released from “Für Elise,” I headed to my bedroom and my mother headed to hers. From behind her door, I could hear the Johnny Carson theme song and the audience’s laughter, as if they were at a party, having a grand time. They were not even thinking about what was going on at 116th and Avalon.
I looked over at Lily’s empty bed. She was in the bathroom—on the phone.
I couldn’t go to sleep. I wandered into the den and turned on the television just to see if the networks were reporting anything about what was going on. There was nothing but regular television. It was as if the news hadn’t caught up with the events.
“Cissy said she thinks there’s about six hundred people in the street now just milling around,” Mrs. Baylor said behind me. She’d come up to check th
e TV coverage as well. “Things are really getting out of hand over there. Some of them folks broke some store windows and started takin’ stuff.”
And yet, nothing on the news.
When Lily finally got off the phone, there were more reports from Miss Cissy via Mrs. Baylor: The looting continued. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail into one of the mom-and-pop stores and Cissy said the firemen were probably going to use those powerful hoses on the people like they used on Dr. Martin Luther King.
Mrs. Baylor paused to say she didn’t think the hoses were ever used on Dr. Martin Luther King, though. But Cissy had said yes, she believed they were. Miss Cissy declared that the dogs would be coming, soon. But the people were ready! They were ready for the po-leese!
Mrs. Baylor and I stood there at the den window, looking out toward Avalon. Lily joined us and said quietly that she knew Nathan hadn’t gone home. In fact, he was with a friend in Leimert Park. I looked at her. So they were back together. I figured. Mrs. Baylor sighed and looked relieved.
The night wore on, and eventually Miss Cissy stopped calling. We all went to bed to wait for whatever was going to happen to happen.
The next morning I hurried into my robe and peered over at Lily still asleep. Her face was serene. I wanted to get the paper. Surely there were pictures and headlines.
I slipped outside and saw how still Montego Drive looked—quiet as a ghost town, the air hushed and peaceful, the only sound the pulsing rhythm of Mrs. Cantrell’s sprinklers. So untouched by the events of the night before. I breathed in the warm air and thought, Another hot day.
I picked up the paper off the walkway but waited until I was sitting at the kitchen table to unfold it. There it was on the first page: 1000 RIOTERS! 5-HOUR MELEE IN AN 8-BLOCK SECTION OF LOS ANGELES! By eight o’clock people driving in the area began to report attacks. Cars being stoned. Motorists targeted. The article confirmed that store windows had been broken and merchandise was grabbed. A liquor store on Avalon and 109th had been set on fire.
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