It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English

  “Nathan, please,” my sister pleaded. Her face crumpled. There was a look of desperation I’d never seen before. She was begging him.

  He walked slowly back to her. “I’m going to ask you again. Do you love me?”

  This time Lily said nothing.

  “What? So you gotta think about that?”

  “I said yes already.”

  “I don’t need you to throw me a bone.”

  “Nathan, I’m not throwing you a bone. It’s my mother.”

  “Your mother is not your responsibility.”

  She just stood there, looking shamed.

  I continued to peek out the window. He had his palms on his face as if trying to exercise extreme patience. Then he dragged them down until his arms hung at his sides.

  “She told you. She told you a month ago that you were just going to toy with me.” His voice was flat, resigned, and I thought, Had my sister toyed with him? Had she just been entertaining herself? I couldn’t believe that of her. She wouldn’t do that.

  “You know that’s not true.” Her voice was suddenly full of tears. “How can you say that to me?”

  I felt stunned. Tears came to my eyes. This was serious.

  He shook his head slowly. “Look at you,” he said. “Just skipping off to your little boutique job where they don’t even know you’re black!”

  Lily was crying. “That’s not my fault! I never said anything about my race. I just never corrected Mrs. Singer. She just had it in her mind that I was Jewish, and I didn’t tell her otherwise. What’s wrong with that when you want the job?”

  He looked at her for a few moments, then turned and walked to his car. He got in and drove away. Lily stood there in disbelief—​that he could leave her that way, that there was a possibility he could just leave her forever. She began to wipe away tears.

  I heard her key in the door and I scooted back to our room just in time. She went to the hall phone and called Lydia. “Can you give me a ride to work?” she asked. Lydia said something and Lily listened. After a bit she said quietly, “We broke up.”

  But it wasn’t just her. It was me, too. She was breaking me up with Nathan, as well.

  Maybe Lily thought Nathan would come back or maybe she thought Mrs. Baylor would say something about him—​some little tidbit about his plans or his comings and goings—​but over the next few days, she gave Lily nothing.

  In fact, Mrs. Baylor became extra-polite and extra-careful to withhold any hint of intimacy or special bond. It was as if Nathan and Lily had never been “friends.” It was as if my sister had never driven to Mrs. Baylor’s house in search of him. As if they’d never cried together in fear when Nathan was arrested, nor experienced relief when my father had gotten him released.

  I think that bothered Lily almost as much as Nathan not calling and not coming back. And we both knew there was only one more Saturday to possibly see Nathan before she left for Spelman.

  By Tuesday the news channels were reporting that things were largely under control. The TV stations were showing the ruins of Watts’s business section and other places in the south central part of the city over and over, making all the colored people in Los Angeles feel bad, as if it was all our fault. Making Linda Cruz and Deidre and Jilly Baker stare at me and whisper behind their hands at the library when I’d gone there to look for a book. I just couldn’t continue reading old Bobbsey Twins mysteries.

  I’d been browsing the stacks, when suddenly there were Jilly and Deidre following close behind me, talking loudly enough for me to hear, but not loudly enough to be shushed by the librarian.

  “How come colored people act like that? Why are they always fighting and burning up stuff?” Jilly was saying to her sister.

  “ ’Cause they like to fight all the time,” Deidre said.

  I eased away a bit, down the Adult Fiction section. Lily had told me I needed to move on from the kiddie stuff and read something more challenging. Broaden my mind.

  “If they don’t like this city or this country, they should just go back to where they came from.” That was from Jilly.

  I looked at the titles on the spines, pretending I was paying no attention to them whatsoever. I stopped at Two Women. Lily had seen the movie. She’d liked it a lot. Sophia Loren was in it. I took the book off the shelf and opened it to the first page. That’s how I usually decided on a book—​by reading just the first page.

  Jilly, with her fat tummy showing between her shorts and her top, and Deidre, with her ratted hair and pink lipstick, moved closer. I shut the book and pushed past them, deliberately shoving my shoulder into Deidre, who was just my height. If I was going to have that reputation, I might as well finally earn it. I practically knocked her over. She stumbled into Jilly with her mouth open in protest, but no words came out.

  Gosh, that was a wonderful feeling—​being colored and liking to fight.

  “I’m glad you didn’t get that part in the play,” Jilly said to my back. “Ha-ha. You thought you were going to get it but you didn’t. So there!”

  Her words stung. But I slowed my pace and pretended I couldn’t hear a thing. I pulled a book out from the shelf next to me and flipped through it. Something occurred to me then. I really could take care of myself.

  Lily’s last day at Marcia Stevens would be on Thursday the nineteenth. They hated to see Lily go, but they were happy she was going off to college—​though they’d never heard of Spelman, Lily added with a rueful smile on her face. “It’s going to be so funny when they find out it’s a Negro college,” she said, sighing. “They’re going to be so confused.”

  She came home on the evening of that last day with a bouquet of roses, and for a moment I thought maybe Nathan had brought her flowers to celebrate her final day of work. But no. It was from Mrs. Singer and her staff.

  “You know what?” Lily said as I took the flowers from her so I could put them in a vase with water.

  “What?”

  “I told Mrs. Singer I wasn’t Jewish, that I was colored.”

  “What happened?”

  “She just laughed and laughed, then asked me why I let her think I was Jewish.”

  I put the vase on the kitchen table and carefully lowered the flowers into it. I filled the vase with water.

  “I told her that I thought if she’d known I was colored, she wouldn’t have hired me. She wondered where I got that from, and I told her that’s what I’d heard, and she said no wonder no one colored ever applied.”

  “That’s funny,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Lily drifted off in thought. She looked so sad and drained and quiet and stunned. Poor Lily. This was the first time I’d ever seen her not in command, the first time I’d felt disconnected from her, as if I were somewhere on the ceiling looking down at her life.

  I’d spent the entire summer dreading August twenty-fifth. All that anticipation, and still it had sneaked up on me so simply, so quietly. My sister was leaving in less than a week. I would be on my own. But I wasn’t afraid. I picked up the vase of roses and followed her into our room. She sat on her bed and gazed out the window, but when I put the flowers down on her nightstand, she looked up at me and smiled as if she noticed my small kindness and it gave her a second of pleasure.

  Lily finally began her packing. She kept the biggest piece of her Samsonite luggage open on the floor at the foot of her bed and, slowly, she began to fill it. As she thought of stuff she’d need, she just tossed it in the suitcase to be arranged later.

  On Friday Lydia came to help her—​or mainly to watch her pack. Lydia’s parents had pointed her toward Howard University in Washington, DC, and she was due to leave the day after Lily. Now she sat on my bed while I sat crossed-legged on the floor. Lily rolled shirts and pants and skirts into tight tubes and placed them back into her largest case. It was as if the summer had dissolved right under my feet. And now we had to turn our attention to the fall and new beginnings and the mystery of what was to come.

  “Do you want him to call?�
�� Lydia asked.

  Lily’s eyes filled with tears. She had explained the breakup to Lydia in detail: the look on Nathan’s face, the things he’d said, the way he went to his car and marched back to say more things, accusing her of using him and stuff.

  “Yes, I want him to call. I want to explain how I feel.”

  Lydia picked at her peeling fingernail polish. She was wearing her hair in a perfect flip with a pink headband. Flips and headbands were suddenly popular, I noticed. She had on hip-hugger pants with suspenders. She could be in Seventeen if they had colored people in that magazine. “I think you explained enough. You’re tired of him. He should get that.”

  “That’s not true,” Lily said, the tears spilling from her eyes. “I’m not tired of him. I’m just going in a different direction than the one he planned for me. Just for now. It’s just for now.”

  “You’re tired of him,” Lydia said blandly. She sighed. “Anyway, what would you say if you saw him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Precisely.”

  Then it was Saturday morning and Mrs. Baylor was gathering her stuff, packing her shopping bags to go home for the weekend. Lily was milling about, trying to plan it just right so she would be the one to answer the door when Nathan came to pick up his mother.

  I was certain her mind was still full of Nathan and she was thinking that this could not be the end. That there might still be a tap on the window or his voice on the phone.

  I knew her calls to him were going unanswered. There was this look on her face when she replaced the receiver that told me she’d called him. A look of pure misery. But I was the one who told her that he wasn’t even there. He’d been staying with his friend Jonah, the one who lived in Leimert Park, far from where the police were concentrating their presence, where they were likely to pick him up for nothing at all. I’d gotten this tidbit from Mrs. Baylor.

  I saw my sister’s face light up with hope. See? I wanted to say. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why his phone is going unanswered.

  But this is what I know now—​and it’s best to learn this early: You can’t force something to happen. If it’s meant to happen, nothing will prevent it. If it’s not meant to be, you can try everything, but it will be to no avail. She was putting all her hopes on stumbling upon Nathan when he came to pick up his mother and then charming him to take her back.

  All she had to do was be there to open the door, to greet him, and . . . She probably hadn’t thought beyond that.

  But then I wondered about something as I glanced over at my sister sitting cross-legged on the floor, rereading what her friends had written in her yearbook. She was laughing at some, shaking her head at others. This is what I wondered: Were her feelings about Nathan based on love for him or a reaction to being dropped? I studied her as she slowly turned the pages and read some of the comments out loud—​as she stopped to laugh again and to explain who had written them.

  Soon Lily was making trips to the bathroom to check her reflection in the mirror. She had a special way of angling the mirror on the medicine cabinet door toward the mirror over the vanity so she could check herself from all angles. She returned to our room, stopping at the vanity to pluck at her tendrils and smooth her French roll. She put on more eyeliner. “Do I look okay?” she asked.

  Then the doorbell rang. Lily looked at me. We could hear Mrs. Baylor in the kitchen, gathering her bags. Lily hurried to the door to get there before her. I stood in the hall, but out of the way. Lily opened the door.

  It wasn’t Nathan standing there on the porch. It was Miss Cissy.

  I could see the look of disappointment on Lily’s face as she said, “Oh, Miss Cissy.” She took a small step back to let her through the door.

  “Hey, darlins. How you two doin’?” she asked, looking around. “This is nice. How long you all been livin’ here?”

  Lily seemed flustered. “Not that long,” she said. “Early spring, I guess.”

  “Where you all live before?”

  “In the Adams district,” Lily said.

  “Well, that’s nice, too.” Miss Cissy looked around again. “Yeah, this sure is nice.” She drew out the word nice.

  “Thank you,” Lily said. She looked down and slowly sighed.

  Mrs. Baylor joined them with her arms loaded down with bags. Miss Cissy took two from her. “Well, let’s be off,” she said, and then they were gone. Leaving no hope for any of the scenarios that my sister had probably concocted in her head.

  As soon as Lily had closed the door behind them, she stomped into her room and slammed the door. My book was in there—​Two Women—​and I wanted to read it. Right then. But I knew not to even think about going in our room to get it.

  So I marched over to Jennifer’s instead. I needed to hear her take on the awful situation that was tearing my sister apart.

  Jennifer answered the doorbell with a guarded look on her face. As if she was happy to see me, but was unsure. As if maybe I was there to accuse her of not being a very good friend.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.”

  “I have something to tell you.”

  She seemed to be bracing herself for a scolding.

  “I mean, I need your opinion about something.”

  Jennifer smiled.

  We sat down on the top step. She looked over at me expectantly.

  “Nathan broke up with Lily.”

  “He’s done that before.”

  “Not like this,” I said. I told her everything while she nodded thoughtfully.

  “You have to get them back together,” Jennifer said simply. “It’s true love.”

  I nodded. I already knew that.

  I started to get up, but Jennifer stopped me. “My mother said I should apologize to you, but I was going to apologize anyway.”

  “For what?” I said, but I could guess what she meant.

  “She said that I was only thinking of myself. And I was. When I was happy that I got the part, and not even thinking about how you must feel. You were the best, and you didn’t get the part you wanted because—” She stopped.

  “I know why I didn’t get it. I’m still really mad but . . .” I let that just sit there unfinished because I didn’t have the rest of the words. “I’ll help you with your script anyway,” I finally said.

  She smiled again. “Thanks.”

  “My mother said there’ll be other roles, and if I decide I want to be an actress, I think there will be,” I told her. And suddenly I believed it.

  CHAPTER 28

  Another Sunday

  * * *

  SOMETIMES SOMETHING MAJOR can happen just like that—​and with no discussion. With no warning. Daddy moved back on Sunday. I heard his key in the door while I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea for Lily. She wasn’t feeling well. She’d been plagued by a headache and sore throat since the night before. Our mother told her she should spend the day in bed so she would be up for traveling in three days. For once there was no argument.

  Daddy had his suitcase in his hand. He set it down and gave me a hug, then he walked directly to his bedroom. My mother was just putting on her robe. I saw him kiss her on the cheek, and she sighed and kept her face blank. Eventually she was in the kitchen making pancakes as if nothing had ever happened.

  The three of us were soon sitting at the table, passing the syrup around.

  “Oh,” my mother said. “It seems Dale isn’t going back to Dartmouth.”

  “Did he really flunk out?” my father asked.

  “No. He enlisted in the Marines. He’s already off to training at Camp Pendleton. Of course, Dovie is beside herself.”

  “What the hell,” Daddy said, and poured more syrup on his pancakes. He always overdid everything. “So they’re still having their bash today?”

  “Of course.”

  After breakfast he settled in front of the baseball game. It seemed he just didn’t feel like putting up with the Mansfields’ annual August barbecue. But
then my mother stood in the den doorway with her hands on her hips. He got up and turned off the TV, went into the bedroom, and came out dressed in his barbecue clothes (Bermudas and a hideous Hawaiian shirt).

  He was obviously on his best behavior. I hoped this meant that he was really finished with that Paula person and she was finished writing him letters and calling our house and that he’d turned over a new leaf.

  The barbecue was not as bad as I’d anticipated. Robin was actually cordial, inviting me to her room to sit on the floor and thumb through her 45s and set aside the ones I wanted to listen to. For each song, she told me who her boyfriend was at the time she first heard it and the places they went (their parents drove them) and the fun they had. But mostly the relationships existed on the phone, I gathered. After we got tired of listening to records, we went back downstairs to go outside and sit by the pool.

  When Robin got up to take a call from her latest boyfriend, Mrs. Mansfield introduced me to a girl who’d also be going to my school. She’d been eyeing me and I’d been eyeing her. Making assessments about each other, I guessed.

  Her name was Charlotte and she was very quirky in a way that you couldn’t really put your finger on. You just knew there was quirkiness there. Which was funny, because suddenly it seemed as if I’d let my quirkiness go. I mean, I was still quirky, but it was more of a . . . subdued quirkiness.

  Charlotte was dark and petite. Her hair was braided in neat cornrows. She had large black eyes and shiny gold hoops in her pierced ears. But I had to do all the talking. I had to ask all the questions. She seemed shy, pensive (my new favorite word).

  As soon as she introduced herself, I recognized the English accent. “I was named after Queen Charlotte, in fact,” she said. She raised an eyebrow as if daring me not to believe her.

  “Who?”

  “Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of King George III. She was queen of England and Ireland from 1761 to, oh, I don’t remember. It was said she had African blood.”