Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  “I guess you right. Lord knows plenty of these mens ain’t nothin’ but dogs in dress-up. I’m just glad Mr. Henry ain’t like that.”

  Blanche felt drained by the time she headed home, like she’d been riding a roller-coaster: up to help from Mary Lee and Curtis, down to work, up over Bobby’s arrest. She was looking forward to a nice long bath with plenty of bubbles and a long session with her book. She dug in her bag for her door keys as soon as she was on her street, but she could see that she had company: three little girls sitting straight as a fence across the top step of her stoop. One squinted like she needed glasses; the second one had a Band-Aid on her knee; the third little girl’s eyelashes were so long they looked false. Sisters: they wore the same mammy-made blue floral-print dresses and Made in China cloth Mary Janes. The one in the middle reached for her sisters’ hands at the same moment they looked up to see Blanche heading toward them.

  “Hey.”

  Three pairs of big brown eyes stared, blinked. Then, all together, they rose and, still holding hands, formed a single file down the side of the stoop farthest from Blanche.

  “Hey! Where you going? We haven’t even met yet!”

  The girls flowed by her like oil around the bottom of a hot frying pan. Hands still clasped, they ran around the corner. A door shut with a bang from the opposite direction, and Blanche automatically turned toward it. A woman slipped out of the lone house next to the garden on the other side of the street. The wail house, Blanche thought, curious to see who that voice belonged to. The woman looked both ways.

  “Doretha? Murlee? Lucinda?” she called in a voice too small to reach around the corner. She stepped out into the street and walked toward Blanche.

  Blanche waited for her to come closer, then raised her hand, about to shout out that the girls Blanche was sure she was looking for had gone around the corner. But the woman turned her head away from Blanche and hurried by in a way that said, Don’t speak. Blanche could think of a lot of reasons to avoid a neighbor you knew, but not a new one. Of course, calling your children to come home to a place where you, and therefore they, were in danger might make you want to avoid talking to anybody. Blanche had a flash fantasy of herself on the stoop waving wildly at the woman, screaming at her to do what Palmer’s knife had stopped Blanche herself from doing; to do what Maybelle had not been able to do:

  “Run! Run! Run!”

  TWELVE

  PARTY HEARTY

  Blanche was glad she hadn’t realized it was Thelvin on the phone before she picked up the receiver. At least he hadn’t yet moved into the level of her affection where she knew when he was calling or knocking at her door. Things hadn’t gotten that far, thank the Ancestors. But they had gotten far enough for her to be thinking about him a couple of times a day.

  “We’re okay for tonight, right?” he asked.

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “Me, too. But it’s not the party I’m talking about.”

  Corny but cute.

  “You sure know how to make a person feel good.”

  “Oh, you ain’t seen, or should I say ‘felt,’ nothin’ yet.”

  “I hope that’s a promise,” she told him. “Because I’m holding you to it.”

  Blanche was in a serious party mood when Thelvin arrived. She hadn’t done any partying in over a year, and this was the first one she’d been to since she’d come back home.

  “Want a drink before we go? Beer, gin, iced tea?”

  Thelvin chose tea and wandered around the room while she fixed it. He eyed the closed cardboard box that held her altar but didn’t say anything. He looked at her book lying on the table, the rock souvenir Mumsfield had given her years ago, the pictures of Taifa and Malik on the small shelf.

  “How’s work? You like riding the train?”

  “Sometimes. Most of the time. Except when some white boy thinks I stole his brother’s job and tries to treat me like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Blanche remembered reading about some racism problems at Amtrak. “You get a lot of that?”

  Thelvin shrugged. “Enough.”

  She handed him a glass of tea with a lemon-peel curl and a sprig of mint floating on top. Thelvin looked at the glass, then smiled up at her in a way that made her think he appreciated the extra touches.

  He nodded toward the picture on the shelf. “Good-looking kids.”

  “And as good as they look.” Blanche didn’t try to keep pride out of her voice, so she prepared herself for a session of your-kids-ain’t-got-nothin’-on-my-kids, a ritual parents performed as naturally as a peacock fanned his feathers. She figured Thelvin must not have any pictures of his kids on him, since he didn’t whip them out.

  “My daughter, Maggie’s going back to college, even though she’s got two kids, you know. And did I tell you? Martin, my oldest, just got promoted to assistant manager of city planning up there in Albany.”

  Blanche waited for the update on the other son.

  “Rog, the youngest, he’s a pharmacist in San Diego. Doing just fine for himself.”

  “Both boys are still single.” Thelvin laughed. “Both of them got more women than…” He looked at Blanche and stopped talking. The proud-papa grin disappeared, too.

  “Now, Martin’s a Big Brother, too.” Thelvin cleared his throat. “And Rog coaches a Little League team. I raised them to give something back, all of them.”

  Blanche was impressed with how easily and quickly he’d read her feelings on this subject. She was also curious to see how he was going to try to explain away sounding like banging women by the pound was something to boast about.

  “I wasn’t trying to say a lot of girlfriends is a good thing.” Thelvin looked at Blanche as if for approval. “They both old enough to be settling down.”

  Blanche held her face in neutral.

  “When I was their ages, I was trying to find the money to pay somebody to take care of them so I could keep working, and wondering how we would manage if I got sick. I guess I’m just glad they got more freedom,” Thelvin said.

  “Is that what freedom is? Being able to have a lot of women?”

  “Uh-oh. I really did put my foot in it, didn’t I?”

  “It’s not your foot that worries me.”

  Thelvin’s smile slipped away. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean no offense. But, I mean, having sex is what young people do, isn’t it? I thought that’s what they were supposed to be doing.”

  Blanche thought about it for a second. “You’re right. It is what people are supposed to be doing, young or old. It’s the how that worries me. Taifa’s just coming into her womanhood. Knowing there are men out there just waiting to add her to their list of jumped bones scares me half to death, even though I know it’s something women have been dealing with forever. And I don’t even like the idea of her speaking to somebody who wants to have sex with lots of people in these days of AIDS.”

  Thelvin was slowly nodding his head. “Yeah, I see your point. My daughter married so young, I forgot how…”

  Blanche raised her glass. “To parents!” She watched relief loosen the muscles in Thelvin’s neck. He swigged from his glass and walked toward her.

  “We got plenty of time, you know. The party could go on to all hours.” He slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her. The tip of his tongue was cool and tasted of mint. He set their drinks on the table so they could involve more than just their mouths in the action. She could feel a pulse throbbing through his penis pressed against her thigh. The heat from it spread across her crotch, up her belly, to her chest, where it hardened her nipples. She pressed even closer when his hand roamed across her behind. Appetizer, she said to herself, then pulled back. Time to go. She went to the bathroom and wiped the moisture from between her legs.

  The party they were going to was just three blocks away, so they left Thelvin’s Buick behind and
strolled over to Branch Street. The night air took up where Thelvin had left off and kissed Blanche’s cheeks and caressed her arms and legs. Crickets and other night creatures played accompanying love songs. It was the kind of sweet, velvety evening that made people lower their voices and walk softly, as if they might frighten the night away.

  The party was at Carl Stillwell’s. Blanche hardly remembered Carl, but she and his younger sister, Melva, had run with the same crowd in high school.

  “We played baseball in the summer league,” Thelvin had told her when he’d invited her.

  Blanche knew Leo, her old lover, was already at the party before Thelvin rang Carl’s bell.

  Thelvin gave her a sharp look. “What’s wrong?” he asked, surprising Blanche with his ability to read her. Carl opened the door before she had to answer.

  “Looka here, looka here!” He hugged and pummeled Thelvin and pecked Blanche on the cheek. “I remember you, old wild thing! You and Melva and Ardell. MELVA! Come see who’s here!”

  Blanche looked quickly around the room. She didn’t see Leo, but she felt him like a vibration just under her heart.

  People Blanche hadn’t seen since she’d been back and, therefore, hadn’t seen for years called out and waved to her. There were also plenty of “Hey, man”s and shout-outs to Thelvin as they made their way into the living room. Thelvin left Blanche with Melva and headed to the kitchen for drinks.

  Blanche leaned against the wall. “How you been, Melva? I ain’t seen you since the dinosaurs died.”

  “I know that’s right.” Melva’s big lips made her face look bottom-heavy, despite her high forehead. When they were kids, Melva had tried to hold her lips in to hide their size. Now they were outlined in deep red and colored in with a lighter shade, as if to highlight them. Good for Melva.

  “What you been doing for yourself, girl?”

  Melva pulled herself up sharp. “Got me a hair salon. ‘Beauty by Melva.’ ”

  “Oh yeah?” When Blanche had lived in Farleigh, Melva was doing hair in her basement on weekends and working at the cigarette plant over in Durham during the week.

  “Yeah, girl. Lot more black people moving in around here, ’cause we so close to the Research Triangle, you know? So, when they start talkin’ that New South stuff about black enterprise, I went for some of that money and opened me up a shop.” Melva paused. “In the new mall!” She said each word with emphasis and offered her palm to be slapped. Blanche obliged.

  “Hot damn!” Blanche didn’t approve of processed hair, but she did approve of black business in the malls, where the money walked by. “Now, that’s what I call movin’ on up!”

  “Yeah, girl. It’s good.” Melva nodded her head and grinned. “Real good. I even got me some white customers and a couple of Hispanic women. Lots of them movin’ in around here, you know.” She looked up at Blanche’s plaited hair. “We do cornrows, Senegalese twists, extensions, all that. Come on by. I’ll give you a free sample.”

  “I’ll be there,” Blanche said, knowing that she wouldn’t. She didn’t even like being around the kind of chemicals that women put in their hair. She kept waiting for reports to come out on the relationship between brain and scalp cancer and hair dyes and permanents. She already knew there was a connection between all those hair-straightening poisons and black women’s programmed hatred of nappy hair. She didn’t like to be around that either. She paid attention to Melva’s hair—kinky at the roots with straightened bits sticking out on the sides, she didn’t want to guess what was going on in the back. Every hairdresser she’d ever met had a hairdo that would be greatly improved by putting a paper bag over it.

  “How’s Junior?” Blanche pictured a big, freckle-faced man with the kind of sleepy-eyed, loose-jawed face that fooled people into thinking he was stupid.

  “Still just as sweet as he can be. He’ll be here later. Got his own hauling business now, you know. Doing real well, real well. Talkin’ ’bout let’s have another baby. I told him, ‘Yeah, if you the one’s gon carry it and be its mama.’ ”

  “How many kids y’all got?”

  “Two bad-assed boys. You got your sister’s kids, right? How they doin?”

  “They fine. Both of them off working this summer.”

  “Lord! Don’t they grow up fast!”

  Sometimes too fast and sometimes not fast enough, Blanche thought.

  “I heard you was back, working with Ardell. How’s it going?”

  “Well, business sure is good. And Ardell got that catering thing down to a bust-out.”

  “She coming tonight?”

  Blanche shook her head. She’d mentioned the party to Ardell, but Ardell said she intended to sleep away her evening off.

  “Speaking of business,” Blanche said, “you got any clients who work for the Palmer family?”

  “Who owns the Bon-Ton? Wasn’t the son the one engaged to that Gregory girl?”

  Blanche pushed herself away from the wall. There was something here, she could feel it. “When was this?” The flutter in her stomach was so strong she put her hand on her belly to calm it.

  “Ain’t no sense interrogatin’ me, ’cause that’s all I remember. Might not even have been him, but I’m pretty sure it was.” Melva took Blanche by the wrist and pulled her down a hallway. “Patsy’ll know. She worked for them Gregorys. If she’s here, I know just where she’ll be.”

  Melva opened the door into a bedroom full of people talking quietly, lolling on the edges of the bed, the bureau, and anything else leanable. Everybody’s eyes swiveled toward the door to see who was coming in. The smoke in here smelled different from the cigarette smoke in the living room. The music on the clock-radio was mellower, too. Blanche didn’t mind. If she was going to breathe secondhand smoke, this was no doubt better for her than the name brands they used to make down the road in Durham.

  Melva looked around the room. “Patsy in here?”

  “Ain’t seen her,” somebody said.

  “Well, she must not be here, then,” Melva said, “ ’cause this is definitely her spot.”

  “Hey, Blanche!” someone called from the corner by the bureau.

  Blanche and Melva stayed a while, talking to more people Blanche hadn’t seen in ages. She kept moving around the room so the joint never reached her. She’d occasionally taken a toke or two before she’d become a parent. Once Taifa and Malik were in her care, she’d given it up—not because she thought there was anything wrong with adults using marijuana; she just figured that parenting was easier when it was an example thing. Maybe she’d add a future toke to her list of emancipation presents.

  “If Pasty knows anything, I sure would like to hear it,” Blanche said when they were back out in the hall. She dug in her handbag for a piece of paper and a pencil. She wrote her phone number down and gave it to Melva.

  “You still ain’t said why you so interested in these folks.”

  “Somebody I know wants to know what some of them Palmers are up to. I’ll make it worth her while,” she added, knowing this would distract Melva from more why-type questions.

  “Ooh. Money. This is serious shit.”

  “And all on the QT. Ain’t nobody gonna know who said what. That’s a promise.” Blanche decided to go all the way. “The middlewoman gets her cut, too.”

  “You speaking my language and singing my song, girl. I know Patsy’ll be by the shop for a touch-up soon. I’ll be gettin’ back to ya.” Melva folded the paper with Blanche’s number on it, put it in her bra, and gave Blanche her number.

  Blanche asked the way to the bathroom. While she peed, she ordered herself just to wait until she’d talked to Patsy, but she couldn’t stop the surge of hope that maybe Palmer’s fiancée had quit him for reasons he wouldn’t want known. She felt not light-headed but light-bodied. A sample of how she’d feel when she was finally done with him? She washed and dried her hands,
straightened her skirt, and took a deep breath. Party time.

  The living room was even more packed than when they’d left. Blanche didn’t see Thelvin. Or Leo. She could tell from the red lightbulbs and Funkadelic blasting from the stereo that it was a serious party for younger old-heads. She intended to get right down with it. She let George Clinton’s groove drain the tension from her back.

  “Well, look who’s here!”

  Blanche’s back stiffened; she didn’t turn around or need to. Luella’s voice reminded her of a mouse with a megaphone. How did Leo put up with that high, loud squeak every day?

  Luella sidestepped until she was in Blanche’s view. Blanche grinned. Luella had gained twenty-five pounds, easy, and Luella was the kind of woman who believed in skinny.

  “I heard you was back,” Luella squealed.

  Blanche just looked at her. She hadn’t liked Luella since they were children. Luella had been one of those cute, caramel-colored girls who called Blanche names like Pickaninny and Tar Baby. She might have changed some of her more evil ways, but Blanche was sure that underneath those extra twenty-five pounds lurked the same prissy-minded, color-struck hussy. And she certainly ain’t giving or getting no head, Blanche thought and smiled at the memory of the last time she’d been alone with Leo.

  “I can’t imagine what Farleigh’s got for a city-living woman like you, Blanche White.”

  Blanche tried to hold her tongue, but something in Luella’s trapped-mouse voice begged Blanche to tease her, to hurt her feelings, to make her cry.

  “Oh, I can think of one person worth coming back for,” she said.

  Luella’s eyes darted from Blanche to Melva, as if she were afraid Blanche might say just who she had in mind. Melva looked like she was waiting for the pie-throwing contest to begin.

  “I hope you don’t think…” Luella began in her Olive Oyl voice, then stopped and stared over Blanche’s shoulder.

  “Hello, Leo,” Blanche said, just as he put his arms around her waist from the rear. Her body seemed to press against him without moving a muscle.