Club Storyville (14 page)

“It will be fine,” Ariel assured me when I could only stare at her in response, and when I felt compelled to believe her, I realized Ariel’s hand still held mine where it had pried it from her arm, and it was that which I couldn’t deny. Even when it felt sometimes like Ariel was lying, telling me what I needed to hear instead of the truth, her touch, no matter how rare, always felt honest.

Once she let me go, though, the nerves roiled my stomach again as Ariel walked up to knock on the front door. The wood groaning in response, it sounded like Rip Van Winkle waking from a long, undisturbed sleep, and I wondered if the person inside would do the same, if an old man named Desmond Caster would come from somewhere in the recesses of the house and appear before us, a vision out of Nan’s past.

“No one’s here,” I said again when Ariel’s first and second knocks went unanswered, and, acknowledging the fact with a sigh, she stepped back from the door and looked out at the empty street.

“What are you doing?” I questioned when she reached into her pocketbook, more curious with each second she dug without finding what she was searching for.

“I’m leaving a note,” she said. “The boarding house has a phone. Hopefully, someone still lives here and will call us when they get in.” Writing it out quickly, once she found pen and paper, Ariel lifted the flap on the mailbox and rested the note in the corner where it would be seen by anyone who stepped onto the porch.

“Now what?” I asked when she finished and turned back to me.

“Now, we wait,” she shrugged, as if she wasn’t sure what else to do, and, nodding, I agreed with her uncertainty.

Chapter Fourteen

A
riel didn’t wait as I would have waited, as I had been taught to wait. Message left, I would have sat near the phone, so as to be as little of an inconvenience as possible to both the person who found the note and the person who had to field the call when it came in.

When we’d heard nothing by evening, though, Ariel asked Buddy to take a message, sounding notably doubtful such a task would be necessary.

“What are you doing?” I asked, after following her to our room and watching her pull a skirt and blouse from the closet I had seen on her before, though not often. Mama thought the skirt too short and the blouse too sheer, and, though she never said it out loud to Ariel, it was clear in her expression each time Ariel wore it, and Ariel had buried it like the rest of herself to get by while she was working for Nan.

“I’m going to get dinner,” she answered, and I felt instantaneous panic.

“Shouldn’t we wait for someone to call?” I tried to remind her of her duty to stay.

“And if no one does, then what will we have waited for?” she asked me, and, without a good answer, I knew she was going whether I wanted her to go or not. “Nan has talked so much about this place,” she went on, rekindling the envious feeling that Nan and I had no real secrets between us after Ariel showed up, that Ariel knew all I knew and a little bit more. “It would be a shame, I think, for us to see nothing but Buddy’s boarding house. Put on something nice, and don’t forget your sweater. Buddy said a lot of places still get chilly inside at night.”

“I can come with you?” I asked, far more surprised than I wanted to be.

“Of course,” Ariel turned to me with an expression that looked like amusement at first, then worry, then acceptance. It was probably all three. “You didn’t think I would go without you, did you?”

Exactly what I had thought, I was just happy to be proven wrong as I shrugged my uncertainty, and it felt like I was confessing my constant state when it came to her.

“Get dressed,” Ariel gently instructed. “I’ll wait downstairs.”

Her gaze falling from mine, she grabbed her sweater and pocketbook by the door, before slipping out into the hall, and I scrambled to not make her wait.

N
ot knowing what to expect from New Orleans, I had brought more clothes than I needed, but the dress I brought in the unlikely event of an evening like this was the one Ariel had given me for my birthday, and the one I had anticipated needing the least. Slipping it on after a short trip to the better-lit bathroom to make sure my hair and face were in order, I stared into the standing mirror in the corner of the room, wondering if I would ever look as if I belonged in it.

When Ariel dressed for town or dinner, even when she dressed for church, she was such a striking woman. Yet, I would put on the same types of clothing, almost like costumes, and look like a silly girl trying to fit in with grown-ups. The only me I had, though, there was no fixing it, so I just had to get by with what I was, which, I acknowledged to myself in the mirror, never quite felt like enough.

Though not entirely pleased with the image I struck, I wasn’t entirely displeased either, and as I made it downstairs, my only worry was that I kept Ariel waiting too long. When I stepped into the main room of Buddy’s boarding house, though, she was laughing with Buddy, reaching out to push him on the shoulder in a friendly way I had never seen a white and black person interact, and it reminded me so much of how she had been with Scott, when Scott had still been around, it seized my breath.

My presence drawing both their eyes suddenly my way, I wondered if I’d made a sound, and the not knowing was incredibly uncomfortable, as was their inspection, which was discreet on both their parts, as propriety dictated.

It wasn’t the first time I had worn the dress, but it was the first time I had worn it for more than the few minutes it took to try it on. Although the weather had been favorable, life had been less so, nothing but work and church and errands, and it had afforded me no worthy opportunities.

“Well now, Miss Elizabeth,” Buddy smiled. “You do clean up.” Then, seeming to remember the reality of the world outside the front door, he looked less assured in his praise. “I hope you don’t mind me saying.”

“Of course not,” I said, grateful for the compliment I so desperately needed, though I knew he would never say it on the street, and I would pretend not to hear if he did.

Despite Buddy’s approval easing the insecurity that had reared up a hundred times standing before the mirror, though, it was Ariel’s thoughts that mattered to me most, as it had been Ariel who most mattered for some time.

“You look lovely,” she gave me just enough, but Ariel’s words still warmed me in a way Buddy’s hadn’t.

“No way near as lovely as you,” I said, and it was more than true. The low lights just shining through her blouse to reveal the chemise she wore underneath, I remembered the slip of silk clinging against her skin the day the heat came to Richmond, and realized, though I had become accustomed to seeing parts of Ariel I never thought I would see, I may never get used to how it made me feel.

“I am sorry you’ll be missing out on my cooking tonight,” Buddy gently teased us. “I make a split-pea soup from my aunt’s recipe. You wouldn’t think a pea could taste so good.”

Laughing lightly, Ariel pulled her belongings from the small table next to where she and Buddy had been talking, and tucked them into the crook of her arm. “Could we have some tomorrow?” she asked.

“I may be able to keep some back for you,” Buddy couldn’t resist Ariel’s charms. “You know where you’re going now?”

“I think we can manage,” Ariel stated, but Buddy looked less convinced.

“The stop is just by the college,” he said, and I knew it was something they had already discussed. “When you come back after dark, though, you get a driver or an escort now. New Orleans does have its dark side when the sun goes down.”

The pause the statement gave me, I wondered if I would even have the nerve to walk out the door again in daylight. As I looked to Ariel, though, it only made her lips turn up.

“Who says I’m not part of the dark side?” she asked.

“I know better,” Buddy said with a laugh, but, for a moment, as Ariel tried to sell it to Buddy, I wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t mean what she was saying. “You ladies have a nice night.”

“You too,” Ariel said, and, at the slightest gesture of her fingers, which was all it took to make me obey, I nodded in response to Buddy’s ‘goodnight’ and fell in at Ariel’s heel.

T
he heat that cloaked the city earlier had let up while we waited out the afternoon sun indoors, and walking down the block with Ariel in early evening, I realized I could truly breathe for the first time since we left Richmond.

Except for in those moments when Ariel’s arm accidentally brushed mine. Or when we passed a stranger who glanced at us with animosity, or with trepidation, or curiosity. Because, though the feeling we inspired changed with each person we passed, there was always a feeling. Two white women walking a long block in a colored neighborhood, Ariel and I were met with no neutrality.

At some point, we crossed a line, the streets filling with a mix of people, and when, at last, we made it to the trolley stop, there were young white men with shoulder bags or books in their hands waiting to ride with us.

As they looked to Ariel and me with smiles, I tried to stand as straight as I stood on the sidewalks back in Richmond, but there was no comfort to be found, and when the streetcar stopped before us, I was glad to have somewhere else to go. Motioned to the front of the line as the doors parted, I sat down in the first seat, watching Ariel drop our fares into the pay box before she sat beside me, and the rest of the passengers filed on in designated order. The white men taking the seats behind us, the colored passengers streamed by to the section marked for them in the back.

There were so many more of them, I imagined the space must be filling quickly, and, looking to the sidewalk to see how many people were left to board, I locked gazes with the black man bringing up the back of the line. Bent slightly at the waist, as if his muscles couldn’t hold him fully upright, he looked mad. More than mad. In that instant, the man looked like he blamed me for all the suffering he’d done in his life.

Dropping my eyes to my lap, where I realized I should have kept them the entire time, my anxiety eased somewhat when I felt Ariel shift, because I knew she hadn’t lied to Daddy, and if she didn’t think we would be safe, she never would have brought me aboard.

When the last man made it on - the one who put fear in me, no matter how hard I tried not to feel it - the streetcar started off with just enough of a jerk to make a few people stumble, and they had to make their way to the back while we were already in motion.

Though I knew I shouldn’t, that it was better to just keep my eyes forward and not see what happened to the man, I couldn’t help but look back. As the last of the passengers squeezed behind the partition, barely fitting, the angry man stared into the cramped quarters for a moment, before turning suddenly and dropping into the last seat of the whites section.

Whirling to face front before our eyes could meet again, I took a breath and slid closer to Ariel until our legs just touched.

It didn’t surprise me, I realized, seeing the man take that available seat. What surprised me were all the people who didn’t, the ones who walked past it and just kept pushing in, though there was no space left, because they had been told the back of the trolley was where they belonged.

Chapter Fifteen

I
had no idea where we were being taken, but, of course, Ariel did. Drumming my forearm softly with her fingertips when we got to our stop, she took gentle hold as we went down the trolley steps, and, though I suspected it was because she was afraid she might leave me behind and would be forced to go to the lost-and-found later to collect me, I let myself believe she just wanted to touch me.

Turning the right way after taking only a second to orient herself, Ariel gave me a sense of direction, as the evening sun, still shining just above the rooftops, glinted off the sprawling bright blue building that dominated the street. I didn’t know it was where we were headed, though, until Ariel walked up to its doors and guided me inside.

A
few minutes later, we settled into our seats in an elegant dining room with mirrored walls and glass chandeliers dropping from the ceiling, amidst the kind of attentive service that had glasses of water and a basket of warm bread on the table before Ariel and I had the chance to get hungrier or thirstier than we were upon arrival.

“This place is expensive,” I whispered when we were left to the menus, and the prices listed alongside the exotic-sounding dishes were the kind Daddy paid to impress clients, but that I had only seen on very special occasions.

“It’s all right,” Ariel murmured. “Your grandmother told me to bring you here.”

“She did?” I responded automatically, and Ariel nodded as she reached for her water. Her eyes returning to the menu, I could see the liquid move with difficulty down her throat, and wondered what other secrets Nan and Ariel had shared behind my back.

“When did she tell you that?”

“The night before we left,” Ariel calmly answered. “She said to make sure you ate at Commander’s Palace, so now you are eating at Commander’s Palace.”

Her gaze rising to me at last, one eyebrow arched, and I wasn’t sure if she was challenging me to question her again or surprised I had questioned her in the first place.

“Did she say anything else?” I decided I may as well dig myself deeper, and when Ariel’s eyes dropped back to her menu, I could tell she was going to lie before she even responded.

“No,” she uttered. “That was all.”

Knowing, if Ariel had any intention of telling me more, she would have already done so, I felt my stomach tighten with irritation and worry as I looked back to the foreign foods and extravagant prices, and wondered if I would be able to eat at all.

“I’ve never had any of these things,” I felt like complaining about something, as my sense of adventure, and the thrill of being out with Ariel, dulled.

“I think that’s the point,” Ariel replied, and, as I sighed at the menu, not knowing what to order, I could feel her steady gaze as she looked up at me again, but I refused to meet her eyes, to let her see how bothered I was that  Nan seemed to choose her every time. “Would you like for me to order?” she offered, and, nodding reflexively, I put the menu aside, because it was one less thing to think about, and if Nan told her to bring me to the restaurant, perhaps Nan told her what to feed me too.