by Riley LaShea
Emboldened by the dark, or perhaps the lingering effects of the alcohol, I felt no haste to look away, watching instead as the fabric swirled around her, clinging tightly, and the tendrils of hair fell against Ariel’s neck as she pulled the band free.
Hypnotized as I was, I didn’t even have the sense to turn my head when she caught me looking.
The finally cool cabin suddenly too hot again, Ariel’s eyes held mine, and, as she moved toward me without blinking, I thought she would teach me something else worth learning, reveal more than a glorious sunset from a southbound train and her ability to hold hard liquor.
Outside the door, there were so many reasons for her not to, but, inside the cabin, inside myself, all I wanted was for her to touch me, to kiss me again, to make me worldly in ways only she could, and, by the time she was mere inches away, my body trembled with the anticipation of her.
Instead of coming to me, though, Ariel dropped suddenly from view and I heard the creaking of the berth below as she settled into her own space, leaving me alone and aching for something I only understood in theory.
“Goodnight, Ariel,” I whispered, because I wanted her name on my lips, the only part of her I could feel any time I chose.
“Goodnight,” her voice was a rasp against the uncertainty in the room, in the trip entire, in the distant relationship holding on by a single thread between us that I knew would unravel the instant that thread died and Ariel moved on.
The soft rocking of the train, the occasional click-clack of the seams in the tracks below us, lulling me to sleep like an infant, I awakened a woman with Ariel’s hand trailing up my arm as she crawled onto the thin mattress over me. Her lips meeting mine again – finally - I clutched to the body that pressed me deeper into the world and elevated me from it at the same time.
Though I didn’t know what to do, my body understood instinctively what it wanted from her, arching against her, holding her closer, head falling back as Ariel’s lips moved to my jaw and down my neck, going places I wanted so badly for her to go, despite knowing I shouldn’t.
Barely breathing, barely able to endure the ache she produced in me, I couldn’t fathom how anything could feel that way, even as I felt it, how a sensation could take me over so completely. Our bodies coming together, I didn’t know where my own sense of touch ended and the feeling of Ariel began.
At several long blows from the train’s horn, I woke again. Alone in the top berth, the ceiling black above me, Ariel out of sight below, I lay between worlds for a moment, trapped somewhere between fantasy and reality, not sure which of the two was more authentic.
Chapter Eleven
If Richmond was insufferably hot, New Orleans was the tenth ring of Hell. Its oppressive heat leaked in through the doors and tightly-sealed windows before the train even pulled into the station, hitting me in a wave of nausea and weakness as I stepped out onto the platform, and trying my resolve to do what Nan asked of me.
“Let’s get some water,” Ariel said at once, tugging me and the suitcases I wished I didn’t have to carry inside the station and up to the counter in the diner. Making me drink the entire glass against the protests of my stomach, she didn’t give me time to fully recover before we were out in the sweltering heat again to suffer some more.
In my head, I had the name of Nan’s friend - Desmond Caster - and, somewhere in my shoulder bag, an address from when Nan knew him. A part of me wanted to go straight there, despite the late hour, to find Mr. Caster, hand him the strange wooden box, and get right back on a train bound north, where the heat suddenly seemed tolerable. Showing up at a stranger’s house without warning in late evening was no way to make a good impression, though, which was the kind of impression I assumed Nan would want me to make.
Ariel had chosen our boarding house because it was near enough to the address Nan had given us to walk from one to the other, and I was already dreading the days to come, imagining how I would boil inside my clothes, despite the thin materials I had purposely chosen.
There were also effects, I realized each time Ariel pressed her fingers to the small of my back to redirect me, or brushed my elbow to make sure I was still following her, of dreaming the impossible. Such invasive fantasies dulled the present, sucking interest from reality like a vacuum cleaner pulled dust from carpet. Knowing better than to want what I couldn’t have was the key to happiness, I knew well, but, whenever I glanced Ariel’s way, what I couldn’t have was all I could seem to want.
Accepting the fact that I would only know greater and greater longing and unhappiness as long as I was exposed to Ariel even more each day, I clutched tightly to the handle of my suitcase, hoping our time in New Orleans would go quickly to minimize the pain, even as I was grateful Ariel was with me to tend to the things I knew little how to do, such as hiring a car to drive us across the city.
Settled an acceptable distance from Ariel in the backseat, the breeze through the windows was somewhat soothing as I watched the buildings go by, so different from those of Richmond. Curving around corners, some with rounded edges, some with triple layer porches, many with the brightest colors I had ever seen on a street front, the buildings of New Orleans made it look like another world entirely.
Crossing a main street, large, ornate houses lined both sides, but, though some of the distinctive features I’d seen followed us once we started down the streets on the other side of the main road, most of the buildings stopped trying to impress. As they became smaller and more run-down, the queasiness of my stomach multiplied and I longed to tell the driver to turn the car around and go back to the neighborhood of lights and striking architecture.
Then, I saw the people - standing outside of buildings, sitting on porches, walking along the streets, despite the heat and darkness that had started to fall - and that was when I was sure Ariel had made a mistake, or that the address Nan had given us was off by years.
“Are you sure this is where you want to be?” the driver spared me from having to ask the question.
“If the address is right, this is right,” Ariel returned, looking ahead between the seats, and the driver said nothing else before coming to a stop just past the streets with all the shops and people.
Glancing up at the name of the boarding house, painted on a small wooden sign hanging above the front steps, I was as certain as the driver we were in the wrong place. When he asked Ariel again, though, she assured him we were where we were supposed to be with some irritation, so I kept my own questions to myself as the driver pulled our bags from the trunk and carried them to the edge of the old Victorian’s porch.
“Do you need me to stick around?” he asked, eyeing the front door with palpable distrust, and, though it seemed like a very good idea to me, Ariel assured him we didn’t, waiting for him to drive away before making a move.
Watching our ride go with trepidation, I wondered what we would do after being abandoned in the wrong neighborhood. Shoulders squared, though, Ariel did the only thing left to do, raising her hand to knock on the door, not surprised in the least when it was answered by a colored man whose smile flickered at the sight of us.
“Can I help you ladies?” he questioned carefully.
“I hope so,” Ariel responded. “I’m Ariel Brandt. I reserved a room.”
Expressive, dark eyes widening in response, the man’s gaze looked especially bright in the light from the porch.
“Yes, of course, Miss Brandt,” he made an effort to smile again. “I’m Buddy Williams. You can call me Buddy, of course. Come in, please.” When Ariel leaned down to grab her suitcases, he rushed to take them from her. “No, no, now, let me take care of those. Please, go on inside. I’ve got fans going. It’s not bad at all in there.” Picking up Ariel’s luggage, he nodded us through the door, and Ariel’s hand on my side was both pressure and crutch as she guided me across the threshold and into a world where we had no right to be.
Setting Ariel’s suitcases inside the door, Buddy went to retrieve mine, and my eyes swept the
room as we waited, trying to find what made the place different. The old house well-kept, its only distinguishing features were striped wallpaper that gave it a rather European look, the chandelier that looked like it was hand-crafted of no more than blocks of wood and mason jars, and the framed picture of a man I didn’t recognize behind the desk, who didn’t look all colored, but was at least halfway.
After bringing our things in from outside, Buddy closed the door behind us, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat off his neck.
“Did you ladies just get into town?” he asked as he stepped behind the desk.
“We came right from the station,” Ariel replied, and Buddy gave a slow nod, as if he was weighing the answer against the thoughts inside his head. Dropping his eyes to his guest book for a moment, his thick thumb tapped a heavy rhythm against the paper, and I could see Ariel’s name beside it in neat print.
“Are you still unsure how many days you’ll need?” Again Buddy’s question sounded careful. Glancing up with guarded eyes, I wondered what he saw in us, two white ladies standing in the front room of his boarding house.
“We shouldn’t be here long.” It sounded as if Ariel was trying to reassure him, and I waited for her to clear up the misunderstanding, for them both to come to their senses, for Buddy to tell us where to find a proper boarding house, and for Ariel to ask him to call another car hire to take us back to the other side of the mansion-lined road.
“Well, I’m glad you chose us,” Buddy said instead, and Ariel gave a slight smile and nod, as if it was an agreement either of them could make. “I hope you won’t mind too terribly,” he went on with less hesitation. “We’re booked full, and I had two gentlemen reserve a single bed by mistake. Obviously, I had to fix that when they arrived. So, that leaves me with only a single room. I assume you ladies are all right to share?”
Standing in the middle of the wrong boarding house in the wrong part of town in a city that could be every bit as wrong when we saw it by full light, it was that - the notion of sharing a bed with me - that at last gave Ariel pause. Fury, and lesser-admitted pain, snapping through me at the unfairness of it, my one chance to say that wouldn’t work for us, to tell Buddy we would find someplace else, was carried away in the forceful rush of my pride.
“Yes, of course we are,” I said, because normal ladies would be fine with such a thing, accepting it as trivial inconvenience, and, with all the reasons we should have been backing out the door, I wasn’t about to let Buddy think I was the one thing that could make Ariel run.
“Well then, let me show you to your room,” Buddy responded, and I realized I had just decided something for all of us in a single moment of rampant ego.
Ariel and I helping with our suitcases, we managed them all in one trip, passing two other guests along the way, who, as expected, were more like Buddy than like us, and who looked at us with anxious, unwelcoming expressions, before Buddy let us into our room with the key and set our suitcases down inside the sparsely, but nicely-decorated bedroom.
“The bathroom is just two doors down on your right. It’s marked, and you only share with two other rooms,” he said, stepping further inside to turn on one of the two fans to circulate the air. “If it gets too warm, you can open the windows. They have real good screens in them, and even all the way up here, we pick up a little bit of the river breeze.”
“Thank you,” Ariel said, though she sounded less certain of her place than I’d ever heard her as she forced a smile at him.
“Are you hungry?” he asked us.
The heat all I could think about from the moment we rolled into the city limits, within the dim, relatively cool room, my stomach responded at the reminder of food.
“Yes, we’re going to have to eat,” Ariel sighed, and I knew she too was recalling the businesses we’d passed, which weren’t open to serve people of our color and probably wouldn’t even have a place to legally put us if we walked through their doors.
“Well, once you get yourselves settled in,” Buddy said. “I’ve got some gumbo and rolls left from tonight’s dinner, or I can make you salads or sandwiches if you prefer that.”
“Thank you, Buddy,” Ariel sounded incredibly relieved at the offer.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he nodded. “You just come down whenever you’re ready. The kitchen is never closed.” Then, with another cautious smile, Buddy took his leave.
As he pulled the door shut behind him, I looked around the room, every bit what I was expecting, with its simple, clean accommodations, and nothing at all what I was expecting, surrounded as we were by colored folks with whom we would be sharing facilities. The reality of that hitting me, I couldn’t stop thinking what Mama would say if she knew.
Whatever she would say, or think, she wouldn’t be entirely wrong, because what we were doing simply wasn’t done, and it wasn’t just out of personal prejudices.
“We’re breaking the law staying here,” I uttered, wondering if Ariel realized that, if she was aware as the white car hire dropped us off outside, or as we stood on the porch, that we were standing on a line it was illegal to cross.
“You don’t need to worry about that, Elizabeth,” Ariel returned.
“It’s against the law,” I repeated.
“Yes,” Ariel stated crisply. “Technically, it is against the law for us to stay here, but those laws are not meant for us. This is the closest boarding house to where we need to be, and the closer we are, the sooner we get this done.”
“Clearly, Nan’s got it wrong,” I argued, trying to ignore the sudden clenching in my chest at the none-too-gentle insinuation Ariel couldn’t wait to be through with me. “Maybe she forgot the address.”
“That may be,” Ariel acknowledged. “But it’s late, and I am not going to search for another place to stay when this room is perfectly adequate. At least, for tonight.”
“It’s a negro boarding house!”
“Keep your voice down,” Ariel at last turned to me, taking a step closer, but where there was always that something that made me afraid because it felt like so much, there was something I had never felt from her before - undiluted anger. “I know where we are, and if someone who cares to tell goes running to the authorities, we will only be questioned as to why we would ever choose to stay in such a place and what these animals might have done to us,” she hissed. “The man who showed us to this room and the people in the rooms around us, they are the ones at risk. All we would have to do is say one of them laid a hand on us, and any of these people would be hanging next to the blooms in the trees come morning.”
It was a horrible thing to say - utterly gruesome and unnecessary - and I flinched at the mere notion. Even knowing there was truth in what she was saying, I silently pleaded for her to stop talking.
“I think, if Buddy is willing to take that risk to accommodate us,” Ariel snapped at last, “then your worries are pretty petty.”
Though I tried so hard to keep it in, with the terrible image in my head of the man who had been so respectful of us being ripped out of the world in such a way, I felt more scared and alone than I had since we left Richmond. Ariel was the only person I knew in New Orleans, and, in that instant, it felt like she hated me, like she hated everything I was, like she wished she hadn’t been burdened with me. Feeling a sob rise into my chest, I couldn’t keep it from escaping, and I heard Ariel’s long, drawn-out breath as I dropped my gaze to the floor, trying to blink back the tears that suddenly filled my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Ariel whispered, but it was only her hand on my arm, reluctant, but sincere, that I believed. “I didn’t sleep well. I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m just so tired.”
Ariel sounded tired. She sounded overwhelmed. When I glanced up, her eyes held no trace of the disgust with me they seemed to hold a moment before. Sniffing and raising a hand to my runny nose, I felt stupid and immature and like a pain, and I wished I had my handkerchief on me, where Mama always told me to carry it, instead of packed away in my b
ag where she said it never did any good.
“This was the closest boarding house I found to where we need to be,” Ariel quietly explained. “If I had been paying attention, or I had thought to ask... but I didn’t even think about it. I forget sometimes how different things are down here. Not as different as us Yankees would have you believe.” She smiled back at me when I managed a small laugh at her effort. “There is still plenty of separate, but it isn’t as flagrant, or on the books, so it’s easier to pretend it isn’t there. I truly am sorry, Elizabeth, but it is a much greater risk for them than it is for us, so no one’s going to tell anyone we’re here. Okay?”
“Okay,” I returned, but when I still couldn’t stop crying, Ariel’s hand moved to my cheek for the briefest of seconds, her thumb swiping away a few of the tears there and making my eyes flutter closed before she let me go.
“Let’s get freshened up,” she said. “And we’ll go get dinner.”
Nodding my agreement at the logical plan, the kind both Nan and Mama would have had, I watched Ariel gather some items from her bag and slip out the bedroom door, wondering what I would do if she didn’t come back.
If Ariel left me alone in a strange place with people unlike me, would I figure out how to talk to everyone the same, like she did, could I find my way home on my own? Or, if left to a world of different, would I close in so much on myself I would stagnate and perish, too afraid to open my mouth to even ask for help?
Chapter Twelve
What little I knew about gumbo, I had learned in the bowls of Richmond, and Nan always made them out to be such a terrible disappointment. “You can’t get a good bowl of gumbo north of the thirtieth parallel,”’ she would complain each time she tried a restaurant owner’s attempt at bringing real Cajun cooking to our city, and, if the chef made the mistake of visiting our table, she never was shy with her opinion.
