Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  She climbed in the shower and unbraided her hair. She hummed E.C. Scott’s “Queensize Bed” as water poured over her head and body. While she washed and shampooed, she thought about Mumsfield. She admitted to being surprised when he’d told her he was engaged. She was a tad irritated with herself about that surprise. Just because he had Down’s syndrome was no reason Mumsfield shouldn’t marry. She’d spent enough time with him to know that which he wasn’t like most folks, he wasn’t less than them, only different. She oiled and cornrowed her hair while it was still wet and marveled at its woolly softness, as she always did.

  After a Cheerios breakfast she made her first call.

  “Hey, Mumsfield, how you doing?”

  “Blanche! I was going to call you, Blanche!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I think of you many times, Blanche. I remember everything, Blanche. All of it.”

  Blanche knew Mumsfield was talking about what had happened years ago while she’d worked for his family—back when she’d been hiding out from the Sheriff in Mumsfield’s household. Mumsfield had done her the favor of not telling his people she didn’t belong there, and she’d helped him find out what had happened to his beloved aunt. Blanche looked at the small gray-green rock sitting on her windowsill—one of the first things she’d unpacked—and remembered when and why Mumsfield had given it to her: a remembrance of their other connection, poor dead Nate, who they’d both cared about.

  When she’d first met Mumsfield, Blanche had chafed against the gut-level connection she’d felt with him. She’d been lucky enough to be born without a mammy gene or a case of Darkies’ Disease, but she didn’t press her luck by trying to befriend her employers’ families. Even so, she knew how easy it was to slip into a Darkie crouch, eyes lifted toward the employer as loved one. Darkies’ Disease was like any other—nobody planned to get it. It just crept up on some people when their emotional immune systems were damaged from having had to grin at one too many insults or otherwise kiss ass to keep a job they probably didn’t want but couldn’t live without. Or people caught the disease from their parents, or grew into it out of their own self-hatred. Her connection to Mumsfield had been as much about her circumstances as anything else. Once she was safe, any link she’d felt to him had faded, although she still had warm feelings for him.

  “Will you please come to lunch, Blanche? I want you to meet Karen, my fiancée. You will like her, Blanche. I know you will,” Mumsfield said.

  “What’s important is that you like her and she likes you.”

  “Yes, Blanche. That is true, Blanche. But other people…If you like Karen, Blanche, then maybe other people will like her more.”

  Blanche was flattered but not fooled. “Other people like who?”

  “Archibald, Blanche. Archibald does not like Karen. But if you like Karen, Archibald will like Karen more. I know it, Blanche.”

  “Did Archibald tell you he didn’t like Karen?”

  Mumsfield hesitated. “His eyes told me, Blanche.”

  Of course. If Mumsfield waited for people to give him information, he wouldn’t know his nose from his nuts. Nobody bothered to tell things to a person with Down’s syndrome living in a part of the world where almost every kind of difference was ridiculed. That’s why Mumsfield was nearly as good at reading people—the language of the way they moved, the tone and undertone of their voices, their frowns and tics—as Blanche herself was. It was a skill shared by most invisible people.

  “I wouldn’t say he doesn’t like her, exactly,” Blanche told him. “Archibald’s real concerned about you and Karen getting married, Mumsfield. He asked me to see if I could find out some things about her.”

  “Are you going to do it, Blanche?”

  “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “If you do not find anything bad about Karen, then Archibald will like Karen more.”

  “But what if I do find something bad?”

  “I know she is a good person, Blanche. I know it.”

  “Okay, Mumsfield. But don’t tell Karen. She might get so mad at Archibald they can’t be friends later on.”

  “Yes, Blanche, I understand, Blanche. Now, will you please come to lunch, Blanche?”

  She liked the idea of lunch at a home where she’d once served the meals, and was eager to get a look at Karen Palmer.

  “Sure, honey. When do you want me to come?”

  They made a date for the following week.

  Blanche made two more calls—to detective agencies in Chapel Hill—then got Archibald on the phone.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll ask around about Karen Palmer for you.” Blanche didn’t mention that she wasn’t just going to be asking around about Karen or that Karen wasn’t even her main interest. She didn’t mention that she intended to collect information on David Palmer and sift it fine as cake flour.

  “It’ll cost you what you’d pay a detective,” she added. In for a penny, in for a bit more.

  “I’m delighted, Blanche. I…”

  “You understand what I said, don’t you?” Blanche interrupted. “I’ll do it for the same price you’d pay a detective.” She held her breath.

  “As I recall, you always did drive a hard bargain, Blanche. I’ll see what such services would cost and…”

  “I already checked.” She quoted him the fifty-five-dollar-an-hour rate she’d just been given.

  “It’s a deal.”

  Blanche relaxed. “Before I start quizzing other folks, tell me what you know about Karen Palmer and her family.”

  Archibald was silent for a few seconds. Blanche could feel his desire to save Mumsfield from a bad marriage and to remain Mumsfield’s financial handler doing serious battle with his social reflex not to talk about his class to people who weren’t in it.

  “Look,” she told him. “If you don’t trust me with what you already know, you need to make sure you really want me to get in these people’s business.”

  When Archibald finished sputtering about how it wasn’t anything against her personally, and how sorry he was, he was ready to talk.

  “Well, let me see, now. I’ve checked the family’s corporate financial holdings and dealings as best one can. Nothing of note there, or at least nothing with a paper trail. You know they own the Bon-Ton department-store chain. There was some talk when old man Palmer took over the whole chain. He had a partner that Palmer managed to buy out at a nominal price. There was talk of undue pressure, if not extortion, but never any proof of what Palmer might have had on the man. Their headquarters are over in Chapel Hill. David Palmer, the only son, works alongside his father. As I told you, the oldest daughter is down in Florida wasting her husband’s money.”

  Blanche tried to picture this woman for whom she’d been working when David Palmer raped her. She could see the bathroom as though she used it every day, but the woman and the rest of the house were gone from memory.

  “As for Karen,” Archibald was saying, “her only work is doing the sort of things such ladies do, I suppose. They all live on the family place, just there off Main Street.”

  “And the son?” she asked, holding her voice level by will.

  “Youngish, single, reasonably attractive, and, of course, wealthy. So few of this sort of young man stay in the area. A good catch, as they say, although I’ve always found him somewhat limp. Perhaps that’s why he’s still available.”

  “Limp?”

  “Perhaps ‘bland’ is a better word.”

  “Never married?”

  “Seems to me there was an engagement some time back. I don’t recall to whom. A local girl, I believe. A lot of gossip when they called things off. I don’t recall why now. I’m afraid I’m not that interested in the peccadilloes of the young. Unless they’re clients, of course.”

  “How does old man Palmer get along with his kids?”

  “Like any
other father these days, I suspect. He doesn’t understand them any more than they understand him. But they do all live together. I get the impression the old man wishes his son were somewhat more lively where the ladies are concerned. Wants the next generation born early enough to mold them himself, I suspect. The mother is well meaning, a bit sanctimonious.”

  “Is that all?” she asked, sensing that it wasn’t.

  “Well, there’d been some tension between the son and Palmer elder, but that seems to have eased.”

  Blanche leaned forward. “Oh? What kind of tension? About what?”

  “The old man can be rather overbearing. I suppose…It was an unpleasant incident. Years ago now, so…”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, old man Palmer once slapped the boy. In public. Everyone saw it. It was quite…”

  Blanche took an instant liking to the old man. “In public, hunh?” She knew this crowd would rather die than have anything ugly happen where others could see it. “Must have really pissed his daddy off.”

  “I would think. But, as I said, they seem to have resolved their differences. The boy went away for a while after that. I never did hear what the fight was about.”

  “Okay, Archibald. That’ll do for now, but I’m going to need some pot-sweetening money. Maybe four hundred dollars. I can’t be taking up folks’ time asking a lot of questions about things they ain’t supposed to know, let alone talk about, without at least helping out with their bills.”

  “Yes, of course,” Archibald said. “I’ll have a messenger drop it off. Cash, if that’s all right with you.”

  Blanche gave him her address and mentally patted him on the head for not arguing with her. “I’ll call you when I got something for you,” she told him before she hung up. “Sooner if I got reason to.”

  Blanche immediately called Ardell.

  “Humm, well, I’m glad you’re finally doing something about Palmer’s nasty ass!” was Ardell’s response to Blanche’s plan to find out all she could about David Palmer. “I just wish it was, you know, more direct—like taking a contract out on him.”

  “Which I wouldn’t do, even if I could,” Blanche said. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea if I believed in a hell where he’d suffer forever, but I don’t. And if I’m wrong, well, if he’s going to be in pain, I want to see it. So what’d be the point in killing him?”

  “So now what?”

  “Why you got an attitude, Ardell?”

  “Well, for one thing, I don’t like the idea of you being mixed up with that Archibald and that other white boy. You almost got killed when you lived with that family! I don’t even know why you’d…”

  “Forget about Archibald. He’s just my cover story. ’Course I’ll check around on Karen,” Blanche quickly added, “but…”

  “I don’t know, Blanche. It seems like a long shot. I mean, what do you think you can find that…”

  “Well, let’s start with what he likely loves most: How much money does he have? Where does it come from? Does he need some? Does he gamble it away? Does he buy women and rape them? Is his daddy in his shit about something? Does he do drugs? And who does he run with and where? Anything and everything, I guess.” A buzz of excitement began in Blanche’s feet and worked its way into her stomach and chest, where it set her lungs and heart vibrating. “Somewhere there’s something I can use against him. I know it. I can feel it. And I know I’m going to find it, too.”

  “Humm, yeah, well, that’s a whole lot of knowing. I hope you’re right. I guess it beats doing nothing. Like you say, if there’s any dirt out there you’re the one to find it, crazy as you are about sticking your nose in other people’s business.”

  Ardell’s lack of enthusiasm for her plan made Blanche all the more determined. “I’ll show you,” she told the Ardell in her head. She made herself a cup of tea, then found a pad of lined paper and a ballpoint pen advertising Jackson’s Plumbing Supplies. She sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea and making a list of what she wanted to know, and put it in her handbag when she was done. She’d stop by the drugstore before she went to see Miz Minnie.

  Halfway out the door, Blanche turned back. She’d better call Taifa now, even if it was a little earlier than they’d planned. She had a feeling, or at least a hope, that it would be a busy day. She reached for the phone.

  Blanche had always expected that as Taifa got older their shared experience as black females in a world that disrespected both their sex and their color would give them a special connection that Blanche was sure was impossible with even the most understanding and decent of males. But as Taifa moved toward adulthood, Blanche had begun to wonder if there weren’t going to be as many things to separate them as there were to bring them together.

  Blanche liked Taifa’s determination. It was her destination that was the problem. Taifa liked well-off people and intended to travel in their circles. She’d picked up all the manners and attitudes she needed to blend in with them, which was very different from where Blanche thought Taifa was headed as an early teen bent on fitting into the ’hood. That loud, baggy-jeans phase was over by the time Taifa was fifteen—gone the way of too-big earrings and cracking gum. She liked expensive things and had learned to shop at sales and upper-end consignment shops. She dressed as though Mummy and Poppy had pots, but in a style very much her own. Instead of trying out for cheerleading, as she’d talked about doing since she was nine, Taifa had joined the Fencing Club. She’d wanted to pledge to the junior chapter of a national black sorority with a history of color prejudice, despite its good works. Blanche hadn’t been able to hide her disappointment. She’d tried to raise both Taifa and Malik to understand that black people couldn’t afford to separate from one another on the basis of nonsense like skin color, that only as a group could they make things better for everybody.

  “You come from a long line of women who couldn’t have joined that sorority if they’d wanted to because they were too black and did the wrong kind of work,” Blanche remembered telling Taifa, who hadn’t been impressed. Blanche rarely pulled rank. It was easier on her nerves to negotiate, try to work out a happy compromise. But there were some things she wasn’t prepared to half-step about. She’d let Taifa know that if she was going to be the kind of woman who needed to belong to exclusive organizations she was going to have to wait until she was grown to join them. Even this summer job at snooty, color-struck Amber Cove was all about being around the so-called right crowd. Many of the girls who took summer jobs at Amber Cove were the children and grandchildren of well-off blacks whose families felt they needed the experience of work, if not the money. Taifa had described it as a good place to make contacts. Blanche didn’t know what she could do about Taifa’s attitude beyond making sure Taifa understood that more than didn’t mean better than and keeping her fingers crossed. She pitied parents who thought they had more control than that.

  “Hi, Moms.” Taifa yawned into the phone.

  “Still tired, I see.”

  “Girls who’ve worked here before say I’ll be over it soon.”

  “You mean you’ll get over being tired from work, or get over being tired from hanging out all hours?”

  “Moms! Get serious! It’s really hard work. That first week I was so tired when I got off I could hardly make it to bed.”

  Good. No time to get into anything. “Otherwise, how’s the job going?”

  “Great. I love being back here. And I’m making fabulous tips!”

  Blanche shook her head. The idea of going back to Amber Cove after having had her feelings seriously hurt there was so far down her list of things to do she couldn’t even see it. But Taifa had loved the place from day one.

  “How are things going with you and Aunt Ardell?”

  “Oh, just fine. We’re doing a lotta business.” Blanche hesitated. “Although I have found a little more time to enjoy myself than you have.”

 
“You two been hanging out, hunh?”

  “Not exactly.” Blanche told Taifa about meeting Thelvin and their recent big date.

  Blanche could feel Taifa coming to attention over the phone.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about him when I called last week?” Taifa sounded as though Blanche had forgotten to mention a new birth in the family.

  “Well, we were both tired and…”

  “Humph! What does Aunt Ardell think about him?”

  Blanche blinked: Taifa’s “Humph!” sounded just like Mama’s.

  “They haven’t met yet. Why’d you ask?”

  “Well, I mean, you just met him and…”

  Blanche grinned. “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, every time I bring a boy home, you always ask, ‘Do we know anybody who knows him? Who are his people?’ ” Taifa imitated Blanche’s very tone. “So who knows this man and who’re his people?”

  Blanche laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. I do need to check him out and I will. I do know his daddy is dead and his mama lives out in Rocky Mount. He’s a widower with three grown kids and a sexy smile, okay?”

  “Sexy? Did you say sexy smile? I never heard you say…Well, I guess you’re planning to see him again, hunh?”

  Blanche was having fun. She’d grown used to being the one trying to find out if the boy of the moment was a troglodyte or a mass murderer and hoping Taifa would care if he was. She’d all but forgotten how it felt on the other side of the fence. She supposed she could run the I’m-the-mother thing that put an end to all questions, but she’d always thought it was unfair when Mama did it to her. And it had only made her more determined to have her questions answered, one way or another. Mama’s mail would have gotten a lot less reading and her bureau and night-stand drawers a whole lot less searching if she’d given young Blanche straighter answers.