The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (20 page)

Look at him. All puffed up with pride.

“That’s a woman’s job,” Alice said.

“It’s a good job,” Billups replied weakly, eyes downcast.

Poor Billy! He wasn’t up to all of these changes. He wouldn’t be able to manage it.

“You’re not thinking, Billy,” Alice said. “We’ve been through this. You know part-time is best. You don’t need to work at all if you don’t want to. There’s plenty of money.”

“I don’t want your money!” Billups said. “
You
decided part-time was best.
You
decided I had to have that expensive apartment. I can stand on my own!”

“By working as a flunky at the hospital.”

Billups shook his head. “I knew you’d do this. I’ve been working for two months and I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d act this way. Look, look at this.” Billups pulled some folded pieces of paper from his pocket—Alice’s weekly checks, uncashed. “I’ve been fine without them,” he said.

“You think you don’t need me? Because of a silly little job? And Eudine? Really, Billups. She cleans my toilets.”

“Leave Eudine out of this. Who are you to decide who’s good enough for who? Royce’s family thinks you should be scrubbing their toilets.”

“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy! I’ve done everything so that you could be happy, and you never were. Not for one minute.”

“I never asked you for anything. I’m sorry you feel so guilty but I can’t do anything about that.”

“I don’t have anything to feel guilty about! I have been trying to help you!”

“You wanted to buy your way out. And what good has it done you? Look at yourself, Alice. You turned into some kind of black Miss Anne sitting up in this big house. And half the time you’re zonked on those pills Royce gives you—wandering around here like a zombie and staring out of the windows. Let it go, Alice. It’s making you crazy.”

“Look how you blame me. You blamed me when we were children and now you’re blaming me for being upset about it!”

“It wasn’t you Thomas took in that kitchen every week!”

The two stared at each other in shock. Billups had never said it aloud. He inhaled deeply to steady himself.

“I don’t blame you, Alice. I used to think you should have told somebody, because you were older and you were supposed to be looking out for me. But I haven’t thought that for a long time. We were just kids. But you have to stop talking about it. Stop apologizing, stop trying to drag me back there. You know what I want, Alice? I want to be normal. I’m twenty-three years old. I want to get married. I want to go to my job every day. I want to pay my bills and make my way and be a man. That’s what I want.”

“I married Royce so I could take care of you,” Alice said.

“You married Royce because you wanted to be better than everybody. Don’t put that on me.”

“You don’t think anything of me at all,” Alice said. “How could you think I don’t care for you?”

“I didn’t say that, Alice.”

“But you’re finished with me now? That’s it. You got a job and girlfriend and you’re finished with me?”

Not my Billy too, she thought. The only person on this earth who needs me, who doesn’t condescend or undermine. Not him too. They stood in silence. After a time Billy shifted his weight from one foot to the other and straightened his jacket as though he were going to leave.

“Billy?” Alice asked quietly. “Does Eudine know about Thomas? Maybe she should. Maybe I should tell her.” Alice raised her voice, “Eudine!”

Even as Alice felt the sting of her brother’s palm against her cheek, she could see he couldn’t quite believe he’d done such a thing. She fell under the force of the slap. She must have cried out because Eudine ran into the kitchen and helped her into a chair. Her lip throbbed, and her thigh was cold where her bathrobe flapped open. One of her pearl earrings had fallen onto the floor. Billups tried to help her, but Eudine waved him away.

“She’s just a little thing, Billups,” she said. “You shouldn’t have put your hands on her.”

“I know,” he said, near tears. “I know.”

“Go for a walk and calm yourself down,” Eudine said.

Though she was talking to Billups, it was Alice who stood. She made her way past the black-suited caterers in the dining room. She waved away a woman carrying an armful of lisianthus and calla lilies and another with tray of serving silver. No one called after her, for which Alice was grateful.

5:30 P.M.

The day had cycled from darkness to darkness, and there was Alice at the top of the stairs as she had been that morning. Anxiety buzzed in her chest and forehead. The guests were to arrive in three and a half hours. Royce’s return from the office was imminent. Alice had been trying for some time to rouse herself and finish dressing before Royce got home, at least that, to spare herself his reprimand and its consequences. She rubbed the side of her face where Billups had slapped her; the corner of her mouth was slightly swollen. The family would gossip about it. She hugged her knees to her chest against the chill that settled over the upstairs at nightfall.

“Mrs. Phillips?”

Alice didn’t reply.

“Mrs. Phillips,” Eudine called again. “I got to get the last of my things from the kitchen, then I’ll be going. Do you think … can I come up instead of yelling up the stairs?”

“You most certainly cannot!” Alice thundered down the steps, but when she found herself face-to-face with Eudine in the foyer, she was suddenly unsure what to say, what tone to strike.

“Well, I guess that’s all then,” Alice said. She wanted to ask about Billups, where he’d gone and if he’d come to the party later, but she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that Eudine might know something about her brother that Alice did not.

“I’d appreciate it if we could settle up now,” Eudine said.

“Settle up?”

“My pay.”

“Oh, yes. Yes.” Alice didn’t have the wherewithal to tally Eudine’s hours or find her checkbook or any of the rest of it, so she said, “I’ll mail the payment. I need to review your hours.”

“It’s nothing to review. I worked three days this week. Three days’ pay, I’m owed.”

“Mr. Phillips should write the check, since it’s the last one.”

“I don’t understand …” Eudine sighed. “Alright. It would be a help if you could send it sooner than later.” She turned toward the kitchen.

The caterers banged and clattered in the dining room—a troop of paid strangers readying the house for Alice’s family, another troop of strangers. Eudine would soon be gone. She would not return the next morning or the next and nor would Billups. Oh, this empty house!

“You can’t just walk out of here,” Alice said. “You know there are things that ought to be said!”

“What do you want me to say?” Eudine asked, turning to Alice.

“That you’re sorry! Aren’t you decent enough to be sorry?”

“I’m sorry you had to find out about us the way you did. And I’m sorry for what Billups did this afternoon.”

“That’s none of your business!” Alice said. “Don’t you say a word against him! You shouldn’t have his name in your mouth!”

Eudine shook her head. Alice felt her disapproval like a second slap. In a rage, she rushed to her desk in the parlor and pulled out an envelope.

“Take it and go,” she said, reaching into the envelope for a thin stack of twenties. “I never want to think of you again! After all of my kindness!”

Alice shook the money in Eudine’s face, and when she did not step forward to take it, Alice flung it at her. She would have spat had she thought to. The bills, thrown with such scorn, fluttered in the space between the two women and landed near Alice’s feet. Even in her disdain, she was ineffectual. She began to sob with such force that she was bent double and had to rest her hands on her thighs to steady herself.

Eudine took a handkerchief from her bag and held it out toward Alice. The gesture, despite its pragmatism, its lack of emotion, seemed the greatest of kindnesses to Alice. She was a starving thing that had been offered a morsel of food, however meager. She kneeled on the carpet. Eudine disappeared briefly and returned with a glass of water. She stood next to the weeping woman, eyes tactfully averted, until Alice calmed.

“I better be going now,” she said, handing her the glass. “It takes me a while to get home.”

Alice wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her bathrobe. “Are you going to keep carrying on with my brother?” she asked quietly.

“That’s not the right way to call it.”

“He has a lot of problems, you know. He’s a good boy, but he can’t take care of himself. He might think he can but he can’t. What will you do, live together in North Philadelphia? He isn’t accustomed to that kind of …”

“I don’t live in North Philadelphia.”

“Well, wherever, but …”

“Ain’t no buts. I don’t live in North Philadelphia. And wouldn’t be nothing wrong if I did. It’s just a place like any other place, don’t mean you can put me in a box.”

“I never put you in a box.”

“You done nothing but put me in a box and now you’re mad ’cause I won’t stay in it.”

“I tried to help you!”

“Help me? By talking down to me all the time? You plain bedbug crazy, you know that? Either you putting me so far down I’m under the floor or you mooning after me, like I was supposed to love you up like a baby.”

Alice felt on the verge of some knowledge, as if all of this time there was something she needed to know, and if she knew it, she might be free. She rubbed her cheek. She wished she could take Eudine’s hand; her palms would be warm and dry, a bit calloused—healing hands. The opposite of Royce’s oppressive touch or Billups’s huge trembling paws.

“I’ve been by myself, you see. And I never had anyone to tell things to. So much has happened to me. You have no idea. I get confused sometimes about what … about how to be. I’ve tried to be so many things and I haven’t managed any of them. You seem like … I thought you knew how to manage.”

“I don’t know nothing more than you do,” Eudine said.

“You know Billy,” Alice leaned forward. “Do you think … do you think Billy will abandon me?” she whispered.

It was not the right question. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Alice realized she had asked the wrong question and didn’t know what the right one was. Eudine looked away. Alice had embarrassed herself. I have embarrassed myself, she thought, but what am I if I don’t have Billy to take care of? What kind of person? What kind of life would I have if we weren’t both so ruined? And more, what if my ruin is not the same as Billy’s? All of this time Alice had been thinking Thomas caused their pain, but it could be, it could be that something had changed, and it was just her, just Alice, ruined all by herself. Here was her precipice, here was her verge. Alice backed away from it as if it were a cliff’s edge.

She stood and wiped her eyes, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“You can’t imagine what a job it is to take care of my brother. It’ll take you all up,” Alice said.

“He can take care of himself. You got to let him be.”

“I have tried.”

“That’s not true.”

“You won’t be able to do it. I’m the only one who can.”

“That’s a shame you think that,” Eudine said. “For your own sake.”

The front door swung open. Billups stood on the threshold. He was pale with cold.

“Billy!” Alice said.

They would make up; they had to. Alice stepped toward her brother. Eudine stepped forward too. Billups angled his body toward his girlfriend and smiled. He smiled I’m sorry and I didn’t mean to disappoint you and thank God you’re still here. Their embrace slashed into Alice like the first flare of a migraine—that sudden and that breathtaking.

The living room’s chandelier shine and the light caught and gleaming in the cut crystal glasses and silver candelabras were reflected in the bay window. There was Alice, small and dull in the foreground. Outside, it had begun to snow. The flakes, white and fat as dandelion fluff, shone in the light from the street lamp. A man, head down, approached the house. The collar of his dark coat was pulled up around his neck. When he passed beneath the streetlight, Alice saw he wore a fedora.

“Billy! Do you see him there?” she said, pointing to the figure advancing in the snow.

“Call the police! He’s right here!” Alice looked at Eudine and her brother. “Why are you just standing there? Don’t you see him?”

She crossed the room to the phone on the desk and began to dial. Billups and Eudine exchanged glances.

“Billy, we have to do something!” Alice said.

Billups gently took the receiver from his sister’s hand and led her back to the bay window. He put his arm around her shoulders to stop her from shivering.

“It’s Royce, Alice,” he said. “See?”

“Royce?”

“Yes, Alice. It’s alright. It’s just Royce.”

Alice looked through the window. It was true. The approaching figure was her husband; and though he looked at her with concern, though he raised his hand in greeting with such kindness, Alice knew that later Royce would convince her to excuse herself to Floyd and her guests. He would tap two little white pills into her palm and tell her she needed her rest. The party would go on without her while she lay upstairs in the bedroom, the blankets pressing on top of her like a body, the skin of her lips cracking in the hot dry air. She would wake deep in the night feeling light and heavy at once, as though her head were a balloon filled with water. She had failed today: she wasn’t dressed and she hadn’t managed her household; she’d fired Eudine. Billups too was going. He’d leave the house and walk along the slippery flagstones until, as if a curtain had closed behind him, his figure was lost to the falling snow. A little while later even his footprints would disappear. Alice knew these things were coming, and she rested her head on her brother’s chest. She wished the man outside really were Thomas, so she and Billups could again have the same enemy and the same fear.