Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (10 page)

“Hey, now!” said the woman, kissing Lu’s cheek. “Sorry we’re late. I couldn’t find Princess Joyce Ann’s crown.”

“I’m Cinderella, Mommy,” said the little girl. “There isn’t any princess named Joyce Ann.”

“Well, there should be,” her mother said, spotting me as Lu helped the girl with her coat. “Hi! I’m Aretha.”

“Ida Dunbar,” I said.

“And this,” Lu straightened the girl’s tiara and turned her toward me, “this is Princess Joyce Ann Hargrove.”

“Cinderella
, Lulu!”

“Princess Cinderella,” Lu said.

I remembered a brief attempt on the Rev’s part to call me his
little princess
, and my mom’s outraged reaction that turned a sweet nothing into a slave name. I guessed the woman to be about thirty with close-cropped hair and three small gold hoops in each ear. She was wearing a long black dress with a high collar that accentuated her graceful neck, and a pair of Doc Martens on her feet that gave her outfit a funky, boho look that seemed just right. I can never pull that off, but I always admire a sister who can. Under her left arm, she was carrying a large black portfolio. I wondered if she was an artist. She looked like one.

“Good afternoon,” I said to the princess. “I love your dress.”

“Thank you,” she said, with the confidence that royalty must confer. “My daddy got it at Target.”

Lu smiled and took the child’s hand. “Let’s go show Miss Iona.”

“And Mr. Charles?”

“He’s out there, too,” Lu said, guiding the princess past her mother. “How’d the pictures come out?”

“Amazing, if I do say so myself.” Aretha grinned, looking around for a place to put down the portfolio.

“Great,” Lu said, disappearing down the hallway. “I can’t wait to see.”

“Put it here,” I said, moving the ice tea tray to a smaller table in the corner that was full of small sweetgrass baskets that I slid over to one side.

“Thanks,” she said, laying the portfolio down gently and taking the seat Lu had just vacated. “You’re the Rev’s daughter, right?”

West End was a small town in the middle of a big city. Everybody knew the Rev and even the people who had arrived after I went away to school and then to work knew he had a daughter.

“That’s me,” I said. “Are you a photographer?”

She nodded. “I’m a painter mostly, but I do a lot of photography, too. Some video.”

“Is that some of your work?”

Her hand fluttered over it protectively, although I don’t think she was even conscious of the gesture. “Yeah, I’ve been documenting the garden project at Washington ever since Mr. Eddie started it two years ago. They’re giving him an award for Black History Month, so I made a set of prints for them to hang in the main hallway right beside the basketball trophies.”

This neighborhood has always been big on backyard gardens. A couple of years ago, after Blue Hamilton became the godfather around here, he started encouraging people to plant community gardens on any vacant lot he owned and now the West End Grower’s Association had plots all over the place, growing everything from juicy jumbo tomatoes to giant sunflowers. The Rev never liked to work in the dirt and my mother never had time, so Mr. Eddie taught me everything I know about making things grow. He had a real flair for it and the patience to show a young person how to do it right.

“I think it’s great Mr. Eddie is getting an award.”

“Yes,” she said, “but you know how he hates anybody to make a fuss over him. He’s threatening to boycott the ceremony.”

That sounded about right. Mr. Eddie was notoriously shy. If the Rev craved the spotlight, Mr. Eddie was content to bask in reflected glory.

“Can I see them?”

“Sure,” she said, carefully untying the black grosgrain ribbon that held the thing together. I moved my glass out of the way to avoid even the possibility of a spill as she opened it.

Aretha was a wonderful photographer. The very first image caught your eye and your heart and held you right where she wanted you. There was Mr. Eddie with a serious look on his face, standing
in the center of a group of high school kids who were clustered around him wearing overalls and the sheepish, hopeful grins of people about to embark on a journey together. Some of them were holding shovels, and off to the right, you could see a pile of bagged manure from Lowe’s Garden Shop. Two girls were holding a sign that said “Booker T. Washington High School Garden Project,” and behind them, you could see the statue for which the school is famous, Dr. Washington himself pulling back the veil of ignorance from the face of a newly liberated bondsman.

“That was the first day,” Aretha said. “There’s Lu right there next to Mr. Eddie.”

Lu had linked her arm through his affectionately and I could see a great big Obama button pinned to the bib of her overalls.

“She’s the one who got him to do it in the first place. They had a perfect plot of land to work with, but nobody had ever done a garden there, so when Lu asked about getting some other kids together to grow stuff, they told her she needed an adult volunteer to make sure they did it right, and a budget they could raise themselves since the school didn’t have any funds to support them.”

There was loud laughter from the kitchen.

“But you know Lu, right? She didn’t let that stop her for a minute. With the parents she’s got, she came out of the womb organizing people.”

We could hear the group from down the hall coming our way. Princess Joyce Ann came first, still holding Lu by the hand, followed by Flora and Mr. Charles, who was still wearing his apron, and Miss Iona, who was not.

“Are those the photographs?” Flora said, sitting down on the arm of the couch and looking over Aretha’s shoulder.

Aretha nodded. “I just started showing Ida.”

“You started without me?” Lu said. “Go back to the beginning, then!”

Aretha laughed and carefully turned back to the first photo. “You’re getting as bossy as the princess.”

Mr. Charles leaned over to take a closer look at the group shot and nodded approvingly at his friend’s photo. Mr. Eddie was the only person I had ever seen who could make garden overalls look elegant. Picture a sepia-toned Fred Astaire weeding a patch of perfect collard greens and you get the picture.

“You made the old boy look good. Pretty soon, ol’ Ed’s gonna have to start signing autographs.”

“Everybody told him those kids wouldn’t want to get their hands dirty, but you know Eddie,” Miss Iona said proudly. “He just went over there and started digging.”

He probably made it look so cool, they couldn’t resist, I thought.

“Now the school board wants to use it as a citywide model,” Flora said.

Aretha turned to the next photo and we all leaned forward to see.

“I’m in there, too,” said the princess, pointing a chubby finger at herself, sans regal apparel, standing in the garden beside Lu, holding a tiny rake and smiling for the camera.

“Wait until we get these up online,” Lu said. “Every high school in the city is going to want a garden!”

“And who’s going to coordinate all that?” Flora groaned, as Aretha turned to another photograph that showed two boys talking earnestly to Mr. Eddie about something on the back of what looked like a seed catalogue. “We’re having a hard enough time finding somebody to take this job already without piling on more for them to do.”

“You’re the one with the grand vision.” Aretha grinned and turned another page. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Look at Dad,” Lu said, pointing at a shot of a tall, sandy-haired man with a big Angela Davis-style Afro, spreading mulch between the rows of new plants.

Flora smiled at her husband’s image. “What a faker! The man can’t keep a tomato plant alive and there he is looking like Johnny Appleseed.”

“Where is Hank anyway?” Aretha glanced around like she might have missed him, an impossibility in the cozy room.

“He’s in D.C. until Friday,” Lu said. “He’s been gone for two weeks.”

Aretha shook her head in Flora’s direction. “If I didn’t know that man was madly in love with you, I’d swear he had a mistress.”

“There are children present!” Lu said, covering her own ears, but Flora just laughed.

“It’s only until June,” she said, draping her arm around her daughter’s shoulders affectionately. “Soon as Lu graduates, we’ll get on up the road.”

“Daddy only took that job because I’m gonna be at Georgetown,” Lu said, rolling her eyes. “They can’t live without me.”

“But we keep on tryin’!”

“Well, don’t try too hard.” Lu grinned at her mother. “I’ll tell you when.”

“That’s the only problem with raising princesses,” Flora said, and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Always with the orders!”

TEN

T
ONI RAPPED ON THE DOOR LIGHTLY
.

“Come on in,” Wes said, pleased that she had been in the meeting to witness his performance. What’s that corny line from
Mahogany
, “Success is nothing unless you got somebody to share it with”?

“Congratulations,” she said, holding up a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

“Where’d you get that?” he said, noting that it was Dom Perignon and unable to stop himself from also noting that he hadn’t authorized any such expenditure.

She set the glasses on the table and opened the champagne without asking for assistance. “You are my new hero.”

She filled both glasses, handed him one, and raised hers in a toast. “And don’t worry. This didn’t come out of petty cash. I paid for it myself.”

He laughed, touched his glass lightly against hers, and took a sip. She did, too.

“You know me too well.”

“Probably,” she said, sitting down on the chocolate-colored suede love seat and crossing her lovely legs, “but the point is, you kicked ass. Always one step ahead. Always got the solution to the problem. Always so smooth.”

“You better stop, girl. You’re gonna swell my head.”

“I could say something really dirty about that,” she said, laughing, “but I’m serious. You were great. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen.”

Her praise sounded so sincere, for a minute, he almost believed it. “That’s the only way you get invited to catch a ride on the private plane,” he said, loving the offer.

“It’s about time,” she said. “Now maybe you can finally join the Mile High Club.”

“I am a charter member of the Mile High Club,” he said, sitting down beside her. “Besides, private jets are for punks. Anybody can do it when there’s nobody else around. The challenge is to get it done on the red eye to L.A.”

She put down her drink and moved a little closer to him, reaching for his zipper without taking her eyes off his face. “If this goes well, you should make me a partner.”

She pushed her hair behind her ears, as he spread his arms across the back of the love seat. This was shaping up to be a perfect morning.

“Sometimes I don’t know if you’re sexually insatiable or just wildly ambitious,” he said.

“How about sexually ambitious and wildly insatiable?”

“Works for me,” he said, wondering if she really thought her pussy was worth a partnership. It was good, he wouldn’t deny that, but no pussy is that good.

“So do we have a deal?”

There were times when truth was requested, but not required. This, Wes thought, closing his eyes, was one of those times.

“Baby, we got whatever you want, and then some!”

ELEVEN