The Red Rose Box (16 page)

I smiled at her. She was like painted porcelain, almost see-through, not like Mama. Mama was like a horseshoe. You could have dropped Mama and not felt too bad about it, knowing she was still going to get up and be in one piece. Not Olivia.

 

 

 

“
Y
ou think Gilbert Martinez is in love with me?” I asked Mrs. Pittman the next day.

“Could be,” Mrs. Pittman replied. “But colored tends to stay with colored unless you lookin to be different.”

I pictured Gilbert with a Mexican girl and sadness filled me up.

“The beans are bout done. I need to go home, get my phone bill. You welcome to come for the ride.” Mrs. Pittman turned off the pot of beans and grabbed her coat.

We drove east toward Avalon, turned north on Avalon to Thirty-fifth Street, right on Thirty-fifth, and stopped the car. I'd never seen where she lived. It looked like something from a fairy tale, like a gingerbread house. The walkway was lined with white rosebushes in bloom. She unlocked the front door and we walked in.

I looked around the front room and counted twelve clocks, each different, each ticking, tocking, waiting to chime together when the hour struck. In the dining room, I counted nine more. She had cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, and clocks she said were made in the Swiss Alps, and all I could wonder with all the noise they made was how in the world she slept at night.

She answered before I could ask. “Used to it, keeps me company, in the place of a man. One way of knowing that I'm still alive. Can't be dead if I can hear a clock ticking.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw the fading yellow tie, hanging on a rusty hanger, over her bedroom door.

Mrs. Pittman noted my observation and said, “In case he ever comes back, it'll be right where he left it.” She went into the kitchen, picked up the phone bill, and said that I was welcome anytime in her home. “Never had any children but helped raise plenty, some of em I like to call my own. You a right nice girl, Leah Jean, man who gets you gonna get a prize. C'mon, now, gotta get my corn bread in the oven. Beans without corn bread ain't a real meal. ”

As we drove through the streets of Los Angeles the yellow tie floated into my mind, staying on top like a leaf in shallow water. I wondered where he was, Mrs. Pittman's colored man, Negro man. I caught a vision of him, heading nowhere but away.

We had just gotten home when Michelle Jordan knocked. Michelle was funny. Ruth didn't like her but I didn't care. Michelle rushed in like she usually did, mouth running like a car motor, green eyes wide open.

She said without a hi or hello, “I can only stay for a minute, my mother's next door at the LeFlores'.” Michelle's mother and Mrs. LeFlore were friends. “What color dress you gonna get for graduation? You gonna buy it or have it made? You gonna have your shoes dyed to match? I'm wearing deep pink only because Mother won't let me wear red and I asked my daddy but he said when it comes to clothes, Mother's the boss. I picked out a pattern last week. I'm gonna get me some falsies. What about you?” Her eyes looked at my blossoming bosom. “Oh, I suppose you don't need any.”

She went into the kitchen, said hello to Mrs. Pittman, picked up the lid on Mrs. Pittman's pot, and said, “Beans? My mother won't let me eat beans.” She took a breath and continued talking. “You gonna wear your hair up because Mother said I could wear a French twist and I'm going to the beauty shop that morning. So if you want to come with me, you just let me know because my mother's third cousin, Jimmie, is gonna do my hair and he could probably do yours too. He does hair so it doesn't even look like colored hair unless you go out in the rain and I'm certain it won't be raining in the middle of June. Did I tell you that Daddy just bought us a brand-new car? Now we have two.”

Mrs. Jordan honked the car horn twice. Michelle turned the brass doorknob and walked out onto the front porch, still talking. Mrs. Pittman and I stood on the threshold, looking, waving as they drove away in the brand-new baby-blue Buick. Mrs. Pittman closed the door and said, “Lord have mercy, gonna drive some poor man crazy.”

Ruth stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. “ ‘Mother won't let me eat beans, especially in our brand-new car, and I will be wearing a French twist.' That girl's fulla herself and someone else too.”

Aunt Olivia walked in, Uncle not far behind her, and asked if that was Michelle Jordan.

We all said, “Yes, that was Michelle Jordan.”

Mrs. Pittman added, “Whose mother's third cousin, Jimmie, is a hairdresser who sure works wonders with colored hair.”

We filled the house with laughter and ate dinner.

Sleep came and I dreamed I was the actress Lena Horne. My dress was emerald green. I woke up, moonlight falling like dew everywhere, and wrote down emerald green, in case the dream escaped with the rise of the sun.

Three Saturdays later at the dressmaker's, Ruth said, “Next year, I'm wearin red, red the color of a fire engine.”

Olivia said, “Red has always been one of my favorite colors.”

I stood on a chair, wearing the emerald green dress, and the dressmaker said, “Hold still so I can get the hem straight.” There was impatience in her fingertips.

I turned and looked in the mirror, and vanity hit me hard like sunlight after you've been in the dark. I felt pretty. I felt like the country girl from Sulphur was disappearing.

I stared at my reflection like Narcissus and thought about white cotton drawers and Ivory soap, blue gingham dresses and black patent leather shoes stuffed with cotton, the push pedal on Mama's sewing machine.

The dressmaker brought me back, saying, “Got to take it in a little more at the waist; take it off, be ready on Wednesday.”

We pulled into the driveway. The front porch light was on. Uncle, sitting in front of the television, watching his favorite western, ignored us as we walked through the door. All he said was, “Hungry.” Aunt Olivia walked over to where he was sitting, bent over, and kissed him hard. There was more than love between them. I knew by the way he looked at her when she walked away, like his television show wasn't important anymore. That made me smile because it was like what Mama and Daddy had, sparks flying.

At dinner there was talk about civil rights again. Uncle Bill said, “NAACP leader down in Mississippi got lynched, the Reverend George W. Lee, wouldn't take his name off the voter registration list. All this talk about progress, I'd like to see some. Something big's bound to happen. White folks gotta give up on this nonsense.

“Fear ... that's what it is,” Aunt Olivia said.

“Pure wickedness,” Uncle Bill replied. “The courts think all they need to do is pass some laws. Laws the KKK laughs at before they get on their knees at night to pray.”

“People have to obey the law. If they don't they have to go to jail, right?” I asked.

Uncle Bill replied, “Sometimes, Leah ... sometimes.”

“Then why don't they take all those people who lynch and burn crosses and just put them in jail because they're breaking the law?” I asked.

Ruth added, “They should put them all on one big boat and send it out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean without food or water. Then they would all die from dehydration and starvation. My teacher taught us about that. Dehydration means no water, starvation means no food.”

“Your gramma will be here next week,” Olivia said, changing the subject. “I was thinking she could stay in the room with you, Leah.”

Ruth looked disappointed.

“Or with Ruth,” she added.

“She could stay with me one night and Ruth the next,” I said.

Uncle Bill said, “Very good, Leah ... diplomacy.”

“What's diplomacy?” I asked.

“It's when a person can deal with a problem and everyone is happy. There's no loser. Everybody wins or at least they think they do.”

I wondered how he knew so many big words. “Did you go to college, Uncle Bill?” I asked.

“Yes ma'am, I'm a Morehouse man ... in Atlanta.”

“Then why were you a chauffeur?” Ruth asked.

“Couldn't find a job at a newspaper. My major was in journalism. Had a few other things I could do well. Drive a car was one of them, saying yessir, nosir was another. I learned a lot watching rich white folks and how they live. I learned how not to be poor. So, I can't say it was a bad thing.”

Aunt Olivia gave him a look of love and Ruth and I cleared the table because Mrs. Pittman had gone home early. I washed the dishes and Ruth rinsed. It felt a little bit like home.

 

 

 

T
he train station was filled with beams of overlapping light. Gramma was alone. Elijah's fear of earthquakes had won.

I looked straight into the eyes of my mama's mother. She reached, pulled me to her, and kissed my forehead, the way she had a habit of doing. Then she put her arms around Ruth, held her close, tight, like she was filling her with love or goodness.

Gramma let go of Ruth and embraced Olivia. Tears came to their eyes but didn't flow. We walked from the station to the car.

“Ruth, Elijah sent you and Leah some love and a little hug, wrapped up inside me, free for the askin, whenever you need it. Said to kiss you both on the forehead for him. And Hank De Leon sent you the possum coats he been promisin you since you was knee-high. Not likely that you gonna ever need to wear em, all this California sunshine.” Gramma held my hand as we drove half a block and parked the car.

We ate lunch on Olvera Street, surrounded by the sounds of Mexico.

Gramma said, “Never had it in my mind to mash no pinto beans but they seem to be mighty tasty this way.” She put the fork into her mouth and swallowed.