P. G. County

by Connie Briscoe

  “But I’m going down. I might as well take them.”

  “Ma, I said I’ll do it.”

  Something in his voice told Pearl not to push him. “Fine. I’ll see you in the kitchen in a bit.”

  She shut his door and walked to the stairs. A lot of this was her fault. She sent him to majority-white schools and praised him when he made friends with white children. She told herself that he was learning how to deal with white people and that would help him get ahead in life.

  But this white girlfriend stuff was going too far. When he came home in the evening after dealing with white folks all day at the office, he needed a nice black woman to greet him, someone who understood what it meant to be black in this world.

  Chapter 12

  Candice parted the living room curtains and watched as Ashley ran down the walkway to an old tan Volvo that supposedly belonged to Kenyatta’s mother. Candice couldn’t believe that Ashley was seeing him again so soon. She had been through a lot with her daughters, but never anything like this.

  The Volvo pulled off, and Candice let the curtain fall. She lifted her cup of Chinese green tea to her nose and inhaled deeply. She needed something to soothe her frayed nerves. The night before, she had dreamed that she was falling off a cliff into a dark void, helpless to save herself.

  She took a sip of tea, sat in a stuffed armchair and stared at the drapes. Why was she so bothered by this? If anything was more puzzling than Ashley’s behavior, it was her own reaction to it. She had worked around black people at Digitech for seven years now. She had black friends and neighbors.

  Back in the sixties and seventies, when blacks started moving in droves from Washington, D.C., to the suburbs of Prince George’s County, many whites fled. She was ten years old when the first black family moved onto their block, and her dad wanted to leave right away. “The niggers will ruin property values,” he muttered as he got a real estate agent on the phone. But her mom didn’t want to move. Mom didn’t think one black family would cause much harm and she convinced him to stay.

  Then another black family moved to the block six weeks later. Within a month her dad was packing the family into the station wagon and driving north to upper Montgomery County, where he crowded them into a new housing development on a measly quarter of an acre. All the houses were carbon copies of one another, and there was barely a tree in sight. There were barely any black people either, and that seemed to suit her dad just fine.

  In Prince George’s, where land was cheaper, the family had lived on several wooded acres, and Candice fondly remembered running and playing in the woods and wide-open fields as a young girl. So when she got her divorce, she moved back to the county and had been here ever since.

  Their house was small compared with others in Silver Lake, but they had a half acre of land. They would never have been able to afford that in Montgomery County. True, Prince George’s lacked the sophistication of Montgomery County in Maryland and Fairfax County in Virginia. You could count the number of decent restaurants and shopping malls on one hand. And some areas in Prince George’s County were downright rough, especially inside the beltway as you got closer to D.C.

  But Silver Lake was special—the jewel of Prince George’s County. All the folks here wanted the same things she did—a prosperous, safe place to raise their children. They were no different from middle- and upper-income families anywhere. And unlike her parents, she had wanted her children to attend schools with children of other races. The country was full of black and brown people with more arriving every day, and she wanted her daughters to feel comfortable around them.

  So why was this thing between Ashley and Kenyatta bothering her so? From what Ashley had told her, Kenyatta was bright and full of promise. He seemed to treat her well and was very polite. That was more than she could have said about some of Ashley’s white boyfriends.

  Still, she wanted to know more about this one. She had to know more. She jumped up and rushed through the living room into the kitchen, where Jim was reading the Sunday paper at the breakfast bar. “I’m going to call around and find out more about this guy, Jim.”

  Jim looked up from his paper. “I wouldn’t do that just yet, hon,” he cautioned. “If Ashley finds out, she won’t be happy about it.”

  “She won’t find out about it,” Candice said firmly.

  Jim sighed. “Who are you thinking of calling?”

  Candice set her teacup on the bar and sat down on a stool. “Jolene next door to start. I talked to her briefly at the wedding. She doesn’t know much about this guy, but I’ll bet she could find out some things if I ask her to. And maybe Barbara Bentley, since Kenyatta’s mother does her hair.”

  He shook his head in doubt. “I wouldn’t do that, but it’s your call. Just be ready when Ashley finds out that you’ve been snooping around.”

  Candice stood up with determination. “I’ll take my chances. I’m her mother, and I have to protect her, even if she is nineteen now. I don’t think she really understands what she’s getting herself into. I don’t even understand it. I mean, he could be a great guy, but a lot of people will judge her negatively because of her association with him.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. Call around if that’s what you want to do.” He went back to his newspaper.

  Candice headed toward the door, then paused. “Jim?”

  “Yes?” he responded without looking up.

  “Tell me the truth.” She paused and fingered the charm around her neck. “Am I being racist?”

  Jim looked up with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “I know my dad can be old-fashioned when it comes to race, and that’s putting it mildly, but I’ve always tried not to—”

  “No, no. Hell, no. I think you’re being a concerned parent living in a racist world. You should feel good that you raised a daughter who’s obviously color-blind. But then”—he paused and exhaled—“you wound up with something like this to deal with. I wouldn’t be surprised if this fellow’s parents have some reservations about it, too. They may think she’ll make his life more difficult than it needs to be.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “Thanks, honey. I needed to hear that. I’ll be in the bedroom on the phone. Caitlin is upstairs, so I’m going to close the door so she won’t hear me. No point getting her riled up. Wish me luck.”

  Candice walked up the stairs and tiptoed quietly past Caitlin’s bedroom, although with the way rock music was blasting from the CD player she could have stomped all the way down the hall and never been noticed. Candice didn’t like all this sneaking around her own family, but Caitlin was likely to give her a harder time about this than Ashley would.

  “Oh hell,” she mumbled after she had closed her bedroom door. She felt like a spy in her own house. It was only a phone call. And she had every right to do this.

  She cracked the door open, sat on the bed and flipped through her phone book to the B’s for Jolene Brown’s number.

  Chapter 13

  Lee rubbed her eyes with her fist and sat up. She looked out the rear car window to see a big empty parking lot. Where the hell was she? She struggled to sit up in the backseat, then she remembered. Last night she had left P.G. County and pointed the car north until she reached Baltimore and pulled into a shopping center on Reistertown Road.

  She blinked against the early morning light and rubbed her stomach. God, she was hungry. And funky. She hadn’t had a real bath in a week, just a couple of bird-baths in public rest rooms with paper towels. And here it was the middle of summer. But the worst of it was that her money was running low. She reached up to the front passenger seat of the car for her shoulder bag and pulled out her wallet. She was down to her last six dollars and had only a half tank of gas left.

  Damn. She had tried to be careful with the money. She pulled into parking lots at night and slept in the car. She ate at McDonald’s and Burger King. But food and gas cost too damn much when you were living on just a few lousy bucks.

  She thre
w the bag on the floor and uttered a string of profanities. She had been too damn greedy, splurging on Big Macs and large fries. At this rate, her ass wouldn’t last out here more than a couple more days, max, even eating once a day at McDonald’s.

  She pulled a photo of her mama and daddy out of the bag and ran her fingers across the surface. It was a cheap snapshot they had taken in a photo booth on the street years ago. Mama had said it was taken on their second and last date as they were coming from a bar in downtown D.C., and that it was the last time she ever saw Lee’s daddy.

  She stared at her mama’s pretty round face. She missed her so much. No doubt Mama and her brother were worried sick about her. But she couldn’t go back there, she couldn’t even call. She had killed a man and she was scared the cops would find her and haul her ass off to juvie.

  Why did Mama have to make them move into that rat-infested stink hole in Seat Pleasant with Uncle Clive? It had to be one of the toughest parts of P.G. County. Fat-ass rats marched around that apartment building bold as you please, acting like they owned the place.

  The roaches were even worse. They ruled the kitchen. It was so bad she was scared to open the cupboards. Once she finished a glass of iced tea and found one floating at the bottom. They ran around in the bedroom and sometimes even crawled into the sofa bed where she slept with her six-year-old brother. She’d wake up in a fit and throw off all the covers.

  They didn’t have much before they moved in with Uncle Clive. Just a little one-room apartment in Landover, Maryland, and she and her baby brother, Vernon, slept in the bed with Mama. But it was clean and there was no Uncle Clive.

  Mama said it was all on account of her losing her government job. The only work she could find was cleaning office buildings part-time at night, and she couldn’t make the rent at their old place anymore. So they had to put up with the rats and roaches at Uncle Clive’s until Mama got back on her feet. Mama said they should be thankful Uncle Clive let them stay there. At least they weren’t living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere like some folks.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if Uncle Clive was their real uncle and he could have kept his foul hands to himself. But he wasn’t and he didn’t. He was some creep Mama met a few months before they moved in with him. And for all Lee could see, he was just a low-life punk drug dealer.

  But Mama said Uncle Clive was gonna help them get out of the hood. Uncle Clive might be a drug dealer now, but he had ideas. Uncle Clive might have a hot temper, but he had cash to keep a roof over their heads. Uncle Clive might be skinny, but he had a car. He was going places and he would take them with him if they were nice to him. So said Mama.

  Lee held up the photo and ran her fingers over her daddy’s face. He was so handsome and had the nicest smile she’d ever seen. She wished she could find him. He could help her out of this mess. But all she knew about him was that he went by the name Smokey and lived in Maryland when Mama knew him. Every time she tried to get more information about him from Mama, she got herself scolded.

  “But what about my real daddy, Mama? Or what about Vernon’s daddy? Can’t one of them help us? I hate Uncle Clive.”

  “Shut up, child. You don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout. Your real daddy? Shoot. He don’t even know you alive. I told you that. I met him in a bar one night. Saw him twice and that was it. He took off before I even got a chance to tell him about you. Hell, before I even knew I was carrying you. That’s the honest-to-God truth. Shoot. Forgot what that man even looked like until you was born. Cuz you the spitting image of that man, I swear. And I don’t know where Vernon’s daddy is neither. He was a young thing when I knew him and he made it clear he didn’t want nothing to do with us.”

  “But you can try and find my daddy, Mama. Can’t you find him and tell him about me? He might come and take us away from all of this. You know what I’m saying?” The rats and roaches. And Uncle Clive.

  “Didn’t I tell you to hush? That was a long time ago. ’Sides, he probably don’t have much of nothing to be giving to us, anyway. Probably got a family of his own somewhere and not a dime to his name. Just like the rest of these sorry-ass men out here.”

  Lee hugged the photo to her chest. She didn’t believe that. Her pops wasn’t like other men. She could tell just by looking at the way he smiled in the photo. He looked just like Cliff Huxtable. The Cosby Show was her favorite TV program ever. She would bet her last dollar that her pops was rich, lived in a big fancy house and had plenty of money, just like the Huxtables.

  Chapter 14

  Barbara waved at the gatekeeper as she glided her Mercedes sedan through the entrance at Silver Lake. Her shopping trip had been an utter disappointment. She had driven all the way out to Annapolis, Maryland, and back and had one tiny bag of cosmetics to show for her trouble. Twenty long miles there and back.

  It was ridiculous to have to go so far out of the way to find decent shopping. But most of the malls near Silver Lake were so shabby, with Target or Kmart being the usual anchors. She wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near one of those cheap discount stores. Planning a trip to a Nordstrom or Saks or Neiman Marcus was like planning a trip to the moon.

  It simply made no sense in a community full of half-million-dollar-plus estates, her own included. In Montgomery and Fairfax Counties, you could practically trip over the Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom stores. The only explanation was that many of the estate homes in Prince George’s were owned by African-Americans. For some reason, upscale department store owners were scared of African American money.

  She sighed as she drove slowly past the shimmering man-made lake that flowed through the community. She had planned to do a lot more shopping on this trip, but she had gotten so frustrated thinking about Sabrina as she tried on swimsuits that she left the mall after being there less than an hour.

  None of Bradford’s other mistresses had put such a big strain on her marriage. In the weeks since the wedding, Sabrina had called the house at least half a dozen times and hung up when Barbara answered the phone. Barbara knew it was her. Who else would do such a thing? But she didn’t even mention it to Bradford. They were barely speaking, and he would simply deny it was Sabrina.

  She turned into their driveway and pressed a button in the roof of the Benz to open one of the three garage doors. She was surprised to see both the SUV and the Jaguar convertible parked as she pulled in. Before she left this morning, Bradford said he was going to be out on the golf course all afternoon with some of his buddies since it was such a beautiful summer day. And nothing could drag Bradford away from the golf course when he had his mind set on hitting those balls. She wouldn’t have expected him back before dinnertime and here it was just after noon.

  She entered the kitchen and kicked off her heels, then walked to the picture window and stared out onto the lawn, where just a few weeks ago their baby daughter’s wedding reception had taken place. A lump welled up in her throat as she thought back to when she herself was the happy bride. A part of her still loved Bradford but she wasn’t so sure he loved her anymore. Sometimes she thought he never had. Or if he ever did, he had a crazy way of showing it.

  And she was clueless as to how to fix things. When it came to Bradford and his women, she was lost. When he was under a lot of pressure at work, she tried being patient. When he came home and didn’t want to talk, she tried to be understanding. She had tried the sexy negligees, the gourmet meals. She’d threatened to leave and even once stayed with her aunt for a month.

  Nothing worked. Like an idiot, she went along with all this for years, using vodka to soothe the pain when it became unbearable. So what if she didn’t have her husband one hundred percent? She was still Mrs. Bradford Bentley. Half of him was better than all of most other men. It had been easier to believe that kind of crap when she was full of booze.

  But she had been sober for two years now, and lately, with the clarity of sobriety and the wisdom of age, all the “things” Bradford’s money could buy were starting to mean less an
d less to her. She had reached a point where she thought she could give it all up to be in a loving, trusting relationship with a man.

  She had even gone so far as to get a divorce lawyer’s name and number from an old friend down in Smithfield a week ago. She didn’t dare ask Marilyn or anyone else in Silver Lake, or even in Prince George’s. They all had connections with Bradford, and she didn’t want him knowing that she was asking around until she was sure she was ready to make her move. The day after Rebecca’s wedding, he had made it clear that he would fight her if she left him. She didn’t want another heated argument like that.

  Should she call the lawyer now? She was sick of all the Sabrinas. She sighed. She could definitely use a drink, but she was determined never to go back to those dark days of drowning all her sorrows in the bottle. Alcohol had turned her into a person she despised—whiny, helpless, pitiful. Bradford thought she was all those things anyway. When she was drinking, she thought them about herself.

  She would decide about the lawyer a bit later. Right now she was going to head upstairs for a nap. She picked up the mail that Phyllis had left on the black granite countertop and flipped through it. Most of it was junk, and she tossed it aside for the trash until she came across a real estate brochure called Extraordinary Properties from Long and Foster. It was a booklet of luxury homes in the Washington metro area that they got once in a while, but what interested her most were the short bios and photos of realtors at the back of the book. One or two of the agents were sometimes black, and Marilyn had been featured once.

  She tucked the brochure under her arm, picked up her bag and walked up the back stairs that led directly to the master bedroom. She hoped Bradford was down in the media room watching a movie or in the exercise room working out. She didn’t feel like seeing him now. She just wanted to crawl into bed and read a bit before falling off to sleep.

  She was in luck, she realized as she dropped her bag and the brochure on the love seat in the sitting room. Her husband was nowhere in sight. She closed the drapes, then turned down the bedcovers. In the dressing room, she removed her suit and slipped into a knee-length nightgown. Then she climbed into bed and flipped through the pages of the Long and Foster brochure.