Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White series Book 2) Page 16

  Getting into Faith’s cottage was no problem. Mattie told Arthur she needed the key to get some books and other things she’d lent to Faith. Arthur arranged to meet Mattie at the cottage. When Blanche and Mattie arrived, Arthur was already there and seemed to have been there for a while.

  “I just came, I just wanted to check on things, to make sure…” His voice failed him under the pressure of Mattie’s disapproving gaze.

  She put out her hand. “Give me the key Arthur.”

  “I’d be happy to stay or come back and lock up later. Al J. asked me to…”

  Mattie’s only answer was to extend her hand further toward him. Arthur slowly pulled two keys on a small chain from his pocket.

  “Good-bye Arthur,” Mattie said.

  “Really Ms. Harris, I am the manager. I really think I should…”

  “Good-bye Arthur,” Mattie repeated.

  Arthur left. Mattie winked at Blanche.

  Blanche didn’t pay much attention to the living room. She got the impression of overstuffed fluff as she followed Mattie down the hall toward the two closed doors on either side of the bathroom. Blanche was glad the bathroom door was also closed. Mattie opened the door on the left into a good-sized bedroom.

  “Up-scale cozy” was how she would later describe the room to Ardell. The large sleigh bed had a two-layered dust ruffle. The bed itself was covered by a lightweight quilt made up of octagonal patches in the shape of flowers. A tall cherry wood clothes closet guarded the space beside the bedroom door. Near one of the windows, a basket full of magazines squatted beside a skirted club chair upholstered in the same rose strewn pattern as one of the dust ruffles on the bed. A row of windup toys danced across the mantle over the blue-tiled fireplace: a grinning man suspended from two poles who did a flip when the handle was turned; a ballerina, all pink and white twirled on one foot when cranked up; a clown slipped on a banana peel; and a bicyclist pedaled and tipped his hat. They were each less than a foot high, metal, with paint in various stages of fading or peeling. A slim wooden desk and chair sat beneath the other window.

  Blanche and Mattie tiptoed around. There was still something of Faith in the place, a hint of scent, a tightness in the air common in the homes of the hard-to-get-along-with. Blanche noticed that someone had been sitting on the bed.

  “What do you think we’re going to find?” Blanche wanted Mattie to be prepared for not finding anything.

  Mattie looked around the room. “I don’t know. I just know there’s something here, something.”

  Blanche wondered why she didn’t want to tell Mattie she’d overheard Carol and Hank talking about Faith. Maybe she just didn’t want to add fuel to Mattie’s fire.

  “But if there was something to find, why would it still be here? Wouldn’t the killer take it?” The word rang in the room like a machete striking stone. Blanche felt the flat of its cold blade along her spine.

  “Maybe she couldn’t find it. It won’t hurt to look.” Mattie looked around the room.

  “OK We’re here, we might as well look and hope we know it if we see it.” Blanche opened drawers and poked under piles of underwear and nightgowns, slips and sweaters that were not exactly jumbled, but not quite neatly stored. Mattie went through the drawers in the two nightstands. Blanche checked on top and under, as well as inside the closet. Mattie went through Faith’s handbags. Nothing, not even a speck of dust under the bed. Help clean like they live here, Blanche thought.

  “Well, if there’s something to be found, it sure is well hid.” Blanche sank onto the slipper chair. “Maybe it’s in some other room.”

  Mattie straightened up from having searched the desk and leaned back in the small desk chair “No. I’m sure it would be here. The other rooms are Al J.’s bedroom and his exercise room.

  “Well, there’s the bathroom.” Mattie rose from the chair. “I have to use it anyway.”

  Blanche knew before Mattie returned that she hadn’t found anything, she’d been too quiet. They’d already felt all over the fireplace for a loose tile or brick, lifted the rug around the edge of the room in search of an easily accessible loose board. Nothing.

  “Blanche, where would you hide something you didn’t want found?”

  Blanche slipped off her shoe and rubbed her corn. “Depends on what it is. Now if it’s something I don’t need to have around, I’d maybe bury it, or maybe give it to a friend to hold. But if I needed it to hand, or just liked to look at it from time to time, I’d put it somewhere people could see it without knowing they were seeing it. Know what I mean?”

  They both looked slowly round the room, then examined the lamps and under the chair cushions. They twisted the knobs at the corners of the bed to see if they could be removed to reveal a hiding place; they made sure nothing was taped to the back of the headboard or under the desk drawer. Blanche looked around the room again. What in it had they not turned upside down or poked inside of? She walked over to the windup toys. Mattie sat forward in her chair and watched. Blanche touched the pointed fingers of the ballerina.

  “When I was a kid, I once stole some money from a neighbor so I could buy my mother a music box with a spinning ballerina on top,” she told Mattie.

  “Did you get caught?”

  “No. I took the money back. Halfway to the store I got cold feet. Not so much over what Mama would do to me, but how she would feel if she found out. I took the money back. It hadn’t even been missed yet.” She lifted the ballerina and turned it around in her hands. She held it over her head and looked at the bottom of the metal platform that held the toy’s mechanical works. “Not as heavy as it looks.” She sat the ballerina down and picked up the tumbler and then the cyclist examining them in the same way. Finally, she reached for the clown. “This one’s heavier. Weighs ’bout as much as a small turkey.” She looked closely at the box that held the toy’s mechanism. This box was a bit larger than the boxes that held the other toys’ works. She shook it. Something slid around inside. Mattie rose and came to stand beside her. Mattie’s breath was quick and shallow. They peered at the toy itself, the clown in its faded red-and-white polka dot outfit, his peeling, bulbous blue nose, the splayed banana peel with hardly any yellow paint left on it. Blanche touched it. Pushed it. Something clicked. She tilted the toy forward and a metal box slipped from the base, like a drawer from a cash register. Mattie and Blanche exchanged triumphant looks. Blanche slipped the box from the toy base and handed it to Mattie. Mattie turned it around to show Blanche the slot where the key went. The box was securely locked. They pried at the inset lid and hairpinned the lock to no avail.

  “Damn!” Mattie banged her walking stick on the floor.

  “No need to use bad language,” Blanche’s imitation of Mattie’s voice and autocratic tone were nearly perfect. Both of them laughed. Mattie plopped down in the slipper chair, holding the box in one hand and her stomach with the other.

  “Someone’s…,” Blanche began.

  “Yoohoo! Mattie?” Veronica called.

  Mattie looked at Blanche with surprise then down at the locked box in her hand.

  “Mattie, where are you?” Veronica sang out in her most affected voice.

  Mattie looked quickly around, then lifted some magazines from the jumbled basket beside her chair. She stuffed the box in the basket and pushed some magazines down on top of it.

  Veronica poked her head round the door frame. “There you are! Didn’t you hear me calling? Arthur told me you were here. I thought I’d come along and see if you needed any help.” Veronica smoothed her hair. Her eyes devoured the room before she looked in Blanche’s direction. “Oh!” she said as though she’d seen a mouse.

  Mattie looked silently up at Veronica.

  “Is something wrong?” Veronica approached Mattie’s chair. “Are you all right, dear. I know the strain of Hank’s death is…”

  Mattie tapped her cane on the floo
r. “You remember Blanche, don’t you Veronica?”

  Veronica sniffed and tossed her head. “Oh yes, of course. Hello.”

  Blanche stared at her without speaking. Mattie did the same. Veronica fiddled with her belt, caught herself, and put her hands down by her sides. She walked slowly around the room.

  “We were just leaving,” Mattie told her. “I need a rum and a rest.”

  “Did you find your things?”

  Mattie gave her a blank stare.

  “The things you came here to get. Did you find them?”

  Mattie brushed past Veronica without a word. Blanche did the same. Veronica trailed behind them toward the front of the cottage.

  “The place could use a bit of tidying up and I’m sure Al J. would want Faith’s things sorted out and packed up. I think I’ll stay and…”

  “We are all leaving now, Veronica,” Mattie told her.

  “Well, I only thought…We could clear it with Arthur if you think that’s necessary.”

  “Come along Veronica.” Mattie’s eyes were nearly as commanding as her voice.

  Once they were all out-of-doors, Mattie carefully locked the door. They watched Veronica walk away.

  “What do you think she really wanted? You think Faith had something on her, too?”

  “Probably. Damn her! I’m tempted to turn around and go right back in there and look for the key to that box. I won’t rest well knowing it’s just sitting there in the magazine basket.”

  Blanche said she needed to see to the children, anyway. Mattie suggested Blanche call them from her cottage and let the Big House handle their dinner. That way, they could go back and look for the key. She seemed quite surprised to learn that Blanche actually wanted to fix the children’s dinner.

  “This evening, I’ll go get the box and bring it to you, if that will help you rest better.” A voice in the back of Blanche’s brain told her this was stealing but she shushed it. Mattie handed Blanche the key to Faith’s cottage.

  When Blanche reached the Crowleys’, the boys were squabbling over the outcome of their umpteenth game of checkers. Tina was talking on the phone with Durant—unless there was someone else who put that trapped-but-happy look on her face. The cottage smelled of just-baked cake. Taifa and Deirdre were sprawled on the lawn out back surrounded by magazines, cookies, Cokes, books, nail polish, and tapes. Headphones sprouted from both their ears. Just two years ago, Taifa had refused to carry anything that didn’t fit in her pockets. Now she dragged around a backpack that grew daily as she collected all the bits and pieces of soon-to-be teenager-hood. Taifa and Deirdre flipped Blanche a couple of waves and went on singing along with the song in their headphones.

  Blanche decided they would eat out of doors and sent Casey to set the table on the front porch.

  During dinner—Blanche’s special marinated chicken, lemon broccoli, corn on the cob—Blanche and Tina debated the effects of various shampoos and conditioners, which led Deirdre to ask:

  “Tina, how come you wear your hair like that?”

  “You don’t like my dreads?” Tina casually flipped her hair at Deirdre.

  “It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just that its…”

  Taifa screwed up her face. “Nappy,” she said.

  Tina laughed and poked Taifa on the arm. “Of course it’s nappy. Most black people’s hair is kinky. That’s the way it grows. That’s the way it’s supposed to be! Helps to protect our heads from falling meteors and police batons.”

  “But you can’t take ’em out, can you?” Taifa challenged.

  “I can cut them off.”

  “But then you wouldn’t have any hair!” Deirdre sounded as though she couldn’t imagine a worse fate.

  “Yeah, but it’s only hair. It’d grow back.”

  “Then why don’t you cut them off and get a perm or extensions?”

  “Because I like nappy hair.” Tina lifted a section of her hair and let it fall. “It does everything we’ve always wanted our hair to do. It doesn’t shrink in the rain, it can be worn up or down, it blows in the wind, moves when I move.” Tina swung her head from side to side so her dreads whipped about her face. “And I don’t have to turn my head over to somebody else. I’m in charge of it. Why would I want to give that up?”

  The look Taifa and Deirdre gave each other said Tina clearly lived in a different world.

  “Hair’s always been a big thing with us black folks, especially us women,” Blanche told them. “I can still remember how excited I was to get my hair straightened for the first time. Nobody had told me I’d be getting burned ears and a lot of threats about what was going to happen to me if I didn’t keep my little behind still while my hair was being fried, let alone what it did to my poor hair.” Blanche shook her head. “You should have seen me! Little skinny black child with two minutes worth of fried greasy hair plastered down on my head and scabs on my ears. It’s hard to believe I thought that was cute, but I did.”

  “Is that why you won’t let me get my hair straightened?” Taifa wanted to know.

  Tina spoke before Blanche could respond. “I had hair just like you when I was a little girl, Blanche. Boy! I can remember praying every night that if I could just have long hair, I’d be good for the rest of my life. I’d have killed my baby brother for long hair, and don’t even mention hair that moved like mine does now!”

  “I bet your mom doesn’t like it much,” Casey said.

  Tina laughed. “She’s getting used to it. Especially now that it’s long.”

  “When was the last time you straightened your hair,” Mama Blanche?” Malik asked.

  Blanche thought for a few minutes. “I was seventeen, I guess. It was the sixties. I was lucky enough to be in on the tail end of a time when some black folks were saying our dark skin and kinky hair have to be beautiful because they are ours. So, there was a lot of nappy hair out there when I decided to give up the straightening comb. It turned out to be more than a fad for me.”

  “When I grow up, I’m going to have dreads, too, like Dread Rapper Dred” Malik announced.

  “See Blanche, things are improving,” Tina grinned.

  Blanche didn’t consider bunches of boys in dreads with their pants hanging off their butts rapping about what bitches black women were as an improvement. Before she could say so, the phone rang. Tina went to answer it.

  Blanche followed her. “If it’s Stu again, tell him I can’t come to the phone. No. Tell him I don’t want to talk to him.” Why the hell should she lie? Tina gave her a questioning look. Blanche went back to the kitchen and parceled out the dish washing chores to the children, then carried a glass of iced tea out on the front porch.

  Tina joined her. “It was him.”

  Blanche could feel Tina waiting for her to explain. When she didn’t, Tina told her Stu had left a message.

  “I’ll tell you what the message is just as soon as you tell me who Stu is and what’s going on. It’s only fair. You know all about me and Durant.”

  Blanche had to laugh. Why had she slipped into treating Tina as though she were an older teen mother’s helper instead of a grown woman? When you hired someone to do something basic for you, did you automatically turn them into someone not to be taken as seriously as yourself? She told Tina the story of her brief connection to Stu.

  “He sounds like a real dickbrain,” Tina announced with the absolute certainty of an uninvolved party, which was not to say that Blanche didn’t agree with her. “I mean, what kind of person disses your living? It’s stupid! God! Men!” She paused. “He’s sorry, though. Know what he told me to tell you? He said, ‘Tell her she can’t possibly think worse of me than I do of myself and I’m going to keep calling until she gives me a chance to tell her so in person.’ Kinda sweet, really, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Blanche replied. “For a dickbrain.”

 
Blanche went inside and poured herself another glass of tea. In her mind, she played out a scene in which Stu told her he hadn’t been able to sleep at all, he felt so bad for dissing her. What bullshit! He likely didn’t mind if she went away mad, as long as she kept her mouth shut. He had a friendly relationship with Christine and David that went back to childhood. He probably just wanted to keep her quiet, to keep her from telling Christine and David that he’d acted like a fool.

  She left Tina a note on the kitchen table with marching orders for the children and headed across the lawn toward Faith’s cottage. The grass was cool and tickled her ankles. Stu stepped out from behind a tree. Blanche walked right up to him, looked him in the eye, and folded her arms across her chest. “Well?” It didn’t appear to be what he expected. He sputtered and cleared his throat three or four times before he could get it together to speak:

  “I don’t expect you to ever forgive me for my rudeness and stupidity, but I am very sorry, sorrier than I can say. I acted like an ass.” He gave her a bad-boy-in-remission look she was sure had gotten him over a hundred times before.

  “What do you want?” she asked him as though he were a salesman at her front door.

  “To start over again. To pretend last night never happened.”

  She glared at him, struggling to keep her internal war out of sight. A part of her not only wanted but somehow needed to forgive him, to wipe out at least this one rejection by another black person. Another part of her was still suspicious of his motive in coming on to her in the first place. In yet another quarter his apology just added insult to injury and would never be acceptable. Other emotions, not quite so clear, made such a loud noise in her head, she knew she was about to lose it and show her natural ass.

  “I gotta go.” She walked around him and hurried back to the peace of the Crowley cottage, forgetting all about going to Faith’s. In the distance she could see Durant and Tina throwing a Frisbee with the kids. When she reached the cottage she went straight to the bathroom, out of habit: It was where she always went for privacy from the children at home. She locked the door and perched on the edge of the tub. She concentrated on slowing her breathing. Don’t think about anything, just breathe, just forget, stop thinking about him for a minute, just…She nearly fell over backward into the tub when she felt, more than heard, him step up on the porch. He knocked, waited, knocked again.