A car full of young colored men drove slowly by. The guy in the front on the passenger side glanced at Mrs. Baylor without interest. Lily tugged down her hat and I held my breath. All up and down the business section of the neighborhood were burned-up stores. There was a tired feeling lingering in the air. It was the end of a big gala and now everyone was asleep or resting—just waiting for night to return.
Someone sent an empty bottle sailing over the car. Mrs. Baylor looked at Lily to make sure she was still hiding under her hat and behind her sunglasses. She glanced back at me. I had scooted down in the seat as much as possible while still being able to see out the window.
Ahead, the traffic light turned red. Until then we had made it through one green light after another. My heart seemed to beat in my ears as we slowed to a stop and waited. Lily drummed her fingers on the dashboard. I could feel her fear. “Come on, come on, come on,” I began to say under my breath.
Suddenly a group of four or five teenage boys, shirtless and laughing and play punching each other, turned the corner. Our car seemed to be the only one on the street just then. No—there were two cars way ahead, beyond the light. One boy pointed at us and started our way, signaling to the others to follow.
Was it Lily? Could he be suspicious of her hat and sunglasses? I looked up at the red light. The boys were coming—getting closer. The one in front began to jog. The others followed his lead. It must have been Lily. I could tell Mrs. Baylor was debating whether or not to drive through the red light. It was too late. They had just about reached our car. But then they ran past. I looked back toward where they were headed. There was an abandoned ice cream truck behind us. An ice cream truck! On this hot August morning, they were running for 50/50s and Dreamscicles and ice cream sandwiches. Drumsticks.
It really was like their own private party with their whooping and hollering now behind us. Still, I was relieved when the light turned green and we were on our way.
“You could have gone through the light,” Lily said, her voice breaking. “Why didn’t you just go?”
“I wasn’t going to give the police any reason to crack me over the head.”
Lily looked around. There were no police to be seen. Just burned-out buildings and trash in the street and a few people roaming about. “Looks like most folks are still asleep,” she said.
“You don’t know where the police be hiding out. There were reports of sniper fire on the police from rooftops. Miss Cissy told me she didn’t know of anyone bein’ on no rooftop. But the police are shootin’ first and askin’ questions later. According to Cissy, the firefighters are letting buildings burn to the ground. They say they been shot at, too.”
“Why’s this happening?” Lily said in a near whisper, as if she was asking only herself, not anyone else.
We pulled up in front of Mrs. Baylor’s house and Lily started to get out.
“Stay here,” Mrs. Baylor ordered.
Nathan’s car was not in the driveway. Mrs. Baylor unlocked her front door and stepped inside.
It wasn’t long before she was climbing back into the driver’s seat. She sat there with her hands on the wheel, breathing heavily. “He hasn’t been home,” she said quietly. She didn’t start the car right away. She just sat there as if she was trying to think of what to do.
Then there was a woman toddling toward us from out of nowhere, it seemed. She was stout and her walk was slowed by her heavy weight. She still had sponge curlers in the front of her hair and when she neared, I could see that her housedress was actually a bathrobe.
“It’s Cissy.”
So that was Miss Cissy. I gave her a big smile. Mainly because I was always hearing the things she told Mrs. Baylor. Now I got to put a face with the name. She leaned on the driver’s side of the car, crossing her forearms on the window sill.
Mrs. Baylor turned to us. “This is my neighbor and dear friend, Cissy. Miss Cissy to you two. This is Sophie.” I smiled. “And this here’s Lily, the older sister.”
Lily smiled and said hello.
Miss Cissy gave us a broad, friendly grin and didn’t seem the least bit self-conscious about being out in her robe. “I’ve heard so much about you all,” she said, and I wondered what she had heard. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
She turned to Mrs. Baylor. “You lookin’ for Nathan?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Baylor said in a breathy way, as if she was about to hear something good or at least have a question answered.
“I hear tell the police got ’im. Think they took him to the Seventy-Seventh Precinct.”
“Oh Lord,” Mrs. Baylor said. “That’s the police station that has a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt on the wall with the words ‘Nigger Lover’ printed underneath.” Could that be true? I wondered. Could they really have those words on their wall for all to see?
“No,” Lily said. “Not Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s a picture of May Britt and Sammy Davis Jr., posted on their bulletin board, with ‘Nigger Lover’ written on it. Nathan told me.”
“Well, whatever,” Mrs. Baylor said. “All I know is that Cissy’s brother—he’s a cop there, they got a few—they put a noose in his locker. And wherever a colored cop sits during roll call, white cops refuse to sit in that row. There are only seven colored. Cissy’s brother was put on desk duty because white cops won’t ride with colored.”
“If they took him, we’re going to get him out,” Lily said.
Lonnie Jacquette, one of Nathan’s friends from high school, saw almost the whole thing, Miss Cissy reported. “He stay over there behind Rosco’s Chicken and Greens. In that little lean-to he got goin’ on. I know that place ain’t up to code,” she added as if she was going off-track. “Seem like you could just ask him what he know.”
Mrs. Baylor sighed deeply. She looked at her watch, then glanced at Lily, who seemed a bit pale with fear. “We have to find out if he’s there,” Lily said. “We have to.”
We drove a few blocks and parked in front of a closed diner. NEGRO OWNED was written across the window in soap. Mrs. Baylor stared at it for a moment, then got out and went around to the back house that sat at the end of a narrow driveway. Lily hid under her hat, and I scrunched down in the seat and watched the street. It was as empty and as dead-looking as a ghost town.
We waited in silence.
Soon Mrs. Baylor was back. Lonnie had given her the details. It seemed Nathan was on his way somewhere when the cops stopped him.
“He had a paint job this morning on Sixth Avenue, off Adams,” Lily said quietly.
The police had set up a checkpoint in the street that was nothing but a card table with a sign taped to it. Everyone was supposed to stop there. Nathan probably hadn’t realized that it was a checkpoint and drove right past. Everything was so crazy, he must have thought it was just some debris someone had left in the road.
The two policemen sitting in a cruiser nearby turned on their lights and followed close behind for a block before he noticed they were pulling him over. They arrested him and called for a truck to tow his car. Lonnie thought they took him to the Seventy-Seventh.
He saw them pat Nathan down before handcuffing him and shoving him into their car. Even though he didn’t have a weapon on him or anything.
Mrs. Baylor looked pained. “Of course he didn’t have a weapon on him.” She sat there for a moment—stunned. My sister began to cry. I couldn’t even remember when I’d last seen Lily cry. Mrs. Baylor reached for her hand.
“We have to get him out,” Lily said. “We have to go there right now and get him out.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Mrs. Baylor said. “I need to get some money for bail. You know there’s going to be bail.”
“Daddy can get him out,” I blurted. And he could. He could go right down there to that horrible place and get Nathan out of jail.
Lily nodded. “My father will take care of this.”
Mrs. Baylor started the car and we headed back to Montego Drive. I reminded Lily
that our daddy was coming over to talk about money. We could ask him then to fix things.
We would have gotten away with everything if we hadn’t gone in empty-handed—if we’d at least had a bag of groceries. Our mother was sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea and thumbing through a magazine. Our daddy hadn’t arrived yet and she was shaking her leg nervously. I could see that she wasn’t even staying on a page long enough to read it.
“Where’d you all go?” she asked, looking up.
Mrs. Baylor sat down across from her. I knew she was preparing to tell the truth. I could see it in her face. “We went looking for Nathan, Mrs. LaBranche.” She looked over at Lily, who’d taken the seat next to our mother.
“I offered to take her, Mom,” Lily explained. “Sophie hid on the floor of the back seat.” She nodded at me. I was standing in the doorway. “We didn’t even know she was back—”
“Do you know how dangerous that was?” our mother said, cutting her off. “What possessed you?” I noticed my mother had makeup on. She wasn’t even going anywhere today, but she’d made up her face and fixed her hair nicely because our father was coming—to talk about money.
“Mrs. Baylor was so worried about Nathan and—”
“And you were, too,” our mother finished for her. “Weren’t you?”
Lily blushed and looked down. My mother stared at her a long moment, and for the first time I think she understood the feelings Lily had for Nathan.
“He was arrested, Mrs. LaBranche,” Mrs. Baylor said. “A friend of his thinks they have him over at the Seventy-Seventh Precinct—in a holding cell. They’re charging him with evading a checkpoint or somethin’ like that.”
My mother frowned. “Is there even such a thing?” She shook her head. “Whatever the case, Mr. LaBranche will be here any minute and you can tell him what’s going on. He’ll help you.”
Mrs. Baylor thanked her, then got up to take a load of wet clothes out to the clothesline. My mother waited until she heard the door close before she turned back to Lily. “Let me tell you something,” she said. “You’re not going to be with that boy, so get that out of your head.”
“Mom.”
My mother put her hand up, palm out. “No, Lily. You’re going to be leaving soon for Spelman. You’re going to be meeting all kinds of suitable young men and—”
“Nathan’s suitable.”
“He’s from a whole different”—she paused—“culture.”
I moved to the sink to get a glass of water to sip on.
“You mean his father isn’t a doctor or a lawyer or some big shot,” Lily said.
“I didn’t go through all this, making sure you met the right people and did the right things, for nothing.”
“Mom, he’s at Berkeley. And that’s where I really want to go,” she added quietly.
“Oh no, my dear. You’re already enrolled at Spelman. You’re already in the dorm. You decide to go somewhere else—you’re on your own.”
Lily’s face hardened. She pulled in her mouth defiantly. But then we heard our father coming through the door, using his key as if he still lived with us.
I saw my mother stiffen. She drummed the tabletop with her freshly manicured nails. She sighed and blinked. Lily and I stayed put. He came down the hall, jiggling the change in his pocket. I held my breath. This would be our first time seeing him since he’d moved out.
He stopped at the kitchen door and held on to both doorjambs as if he was holding up the house, showing us the mustache he’d grown. He looked a little like Clark Gable, though not as handsome. He’d lost some weight and his stomach was nearly flat again.
He stood there looking at us. “I’m outnumbered,” he joked.
Lily got up and hugged him, but I could tell it was a hug that was barely there. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, Plumcake.” He hadn’t called her that in a long time. Then he looked at me. “What about you, Sweet Pea? You have a hug for your old dad?”
I sat there for a moment, deciding. But then I got up and hugged him loosely. I was still mad at him. We both looked at my mother. She rolled her eyes a little. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just . . . out of hugs.”
She turned to me and Lily. “Can you both excuse us?”
“Mommy, don’t forget to tell him about Nathan,” I said.
She stared at me until I followed Lily out of the kitchen.
As soon as we got to our room, I turned to Lily. “Are you going to UC Berkeley?”
She said nothing at first. Then, “I’m not talking about that right now.” She looked out the window. “I’d have to reapply and sit out a year. I don’t know if I want to do that.”
Maybe not. But I knew she was considering it.
Our father was efficient in getting Nathan out of jail. By that night a curfew was in effect and Nathan had been released from custody. Nathan told Lily later that there was no case. He hadn’t done anything wrong. The cops just wanted to arrest folks, to feel like they were doing something. Now there were fees to pay to get his car out of impound. And for nothing. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
I wondered if my mother would let my father come home now. Would she think he’d been banned from the house long enough? I’d been imagining him walking through the door with his suitcase in hand so that we all could live happily ever after. Now I pictured him living in a Motel 6, miserable. He was a hero in Mrs. Baylor’s eyes, but in my mother’s eyes, maybe not so much.
Nathan told Lily more about the people he wanted to write about who were afraid to leave their houses. They didn’t want to see the stores that had been looted or burned to the ground and the cars that had been set on fire. They’d been huddled in their homes for four days, hoping they wouldn’t run out of milk or bread or need a prescription filled. Nathan still planned to interview them so he could put together an eyewitness account for The Daily Cal, UC Berkeley’s student paper. He’d decided he wanted to be a journalist.
“Don’t go back over there, Nathan,” I heard Lily tell him on the phone. “Wait until everything blows over.”
Later, Lily and I sat on the den sofa like zombies and watched the news reporting the same stuff over and over. Lily said that’s because TV news had only white reporters, and white reporters didn’t want to be hit over the head with a Molotov cocktail. We both laughed, picturing it.
The reporting was now all about the curfew and how the National Guard was all over the place. I wondered if—for a lot of people—it was going to feel like the air had been let out of their angry protest, leaving nothing behind but a strange, empty, mocking silence.
CHAPTER 25
Nathan’s Words
* * *
ON SUNDAY MORNING the news channels were showing a zillion National Guardsmen all over South Central LA. In jeeps and marching in formations. Up and down Crenshaw, protecting the stores and businesses, I supposed.
Suddenly, I wanted to see them in person. “Let’s tell Mom we need to go to the store,” I said to Lily while we ate our cereal. Mrs. Baylor was up in her room, having a day off at our house. Which was unusual.
“She’s not going to let us.”
“Let’s tell her we need milk and bread and stuff,” I said.
“She’ll just tell us to do without.”
“Tell her you need sanitary pads,” I said, and burst out laughing.
“She’ll give me some of hers.”
Before we could work it out, Jennifer came knocking with her script in hand, asking if I could run lines with her—as if I hadn’t been excluded from the beach trip, as if I felt just fine that she’d gotten her role and I didn’t have mine.
“I’m going to the store with my sister,” I told her. “I’ll come over when I get back.”
It was the truth, because Lily was suddenly standing in the doorway behind me holding up our mother’s keys. “Are you ready or not?”
Ha! I immediately felt better about everything.
“How’d you get her to
give you the keys?” I asked after I closed the door.
“I told her we were almost out of food and that I’d do the grocery shopping.”
“She’s not afraid for us to be out?”
“Nope. For two reasons, I’m thinking. The riots weren’t on our side of town and the National Guard are everywhere.”
“Let’s take Valley Ridge,” I suggested.
As we started off down the street, I didn’t even glance at Jennifer’s house once. I felt a strange sense of independence.
Sure enough, at the bottom of Valley Ridge was one lonely jeep parked by the side of the road. In it were two tired-looking guardsmen wearing helmets that looked like downturned bowls on their heads. Disappointing.
“Draft dodgers,” Lily said behind her hand. “They get to stay out of Vietnam.”
For a moment I looked at the two guardsmen differently. As if they were cowards instead of big bad soldiers. Then I sort of felt sorry for them, sitting in that open jeep in the hot sun.
One got out with the barrel of his rifle angled down. We were at a stop sign, but he held up his palm anyway, ordering us to stay there. With an air of authority, he sauntered over to us. He leaned his reddened face into the car and cleared his throat.
“Where are you coming from?”
“Our house,” Lily said. “On Montego Drive.” She scrunched her mouth to the side and looked down. I knew she wanted to laugh.
He gazed up the hill. “And where are you going?”
“Von’s Supermarket.”
He stared at us for a moment or two. That was probably required—a certain length of time to delay people. “You know there’s a curfew in effect,” he said.
“Yes. Tonight. Eight p.m.,” Lily replied.
He gazed at us for a bit longer, then waved us on. And that was that.
Lily pretended to wipe sweat off her brow. “Did you see that rifle?” she said. “I’m shaking just from being near that thing.” Then she laughed.
It All Comes Down to This Page 21
