The House of Eve (100)

Then she mumbled, “You was conceived in the back of Junior’s daddy’s car. I thought by giving it up, I could make him love me. But then he disappeared. And his mama laughed in my face, dismissing me like I wasn’t shit.” She spit the words out, and I could tell the memory still haunted her. She furiously shook salt and then lemon pepper into the bowl of chicken.

“When Junior left me high and dry, I ain’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.” She took the chicken out of the mixing bowl and started lining the pieces up on the baking tray. “But now with Leap, things is different.”

“I’m happy for you,” I blurted. As I said it, I realized it was true.

“Marie always loved you like you were her own. You’ll be fine with her. Safe.”

That last word hung in the air. I wondered what it would be like if the tension between us simply vanished. I wished we could find some middle ground. Inez opened the oven and pushed the tray of chicken inside, then wiped her hands on a towel.

“Before you go, some mail came for you.” She pulled a drawer open and then rummaged through a few papers. Then she thrust an envelope onto the table.

Cheyney State College was emblazoned in royal blue on the envelope. Could this be the letter that would change the direction of my life? The fruit of so many sacrifices. I picked it up and dropped it in my shoulder bag.

“Thank you.”

“Go on now, before it gets too dark out. You know how these fools around here get to acting when the sun goes down.”

I stood up, childishly longing for Inez to come over and hug me, but a shrill cry from the baby shattered the space between us.

“Got damn it,” she mumbled under her breath, but then a smile crept onto her face. She dropped the towel and hurried down the hall to her child.

The last thing I heard was Inez cooing, “Who’s a good girl, Mommy’s baby…,” as the door closed behind me.





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX REVELATIONS



Eleanor




The next morning, Eleanor found a note on the kitchen table from her mother telling her that she had gone over to check on Sister Clarise, an elderly woman at the church, and that she’d be back in a few hours. A breakfast of eggs, bacon and biscuits was left on the stove under a sheet of tinfoil. Eleanor gobbled it down. She had not called William since she had arrived, and she had an urge to talk to him. She picked up the phone but dropped it back on the hook without dialing the number. What would she say?

For as far back as she could remember, there had been a pile of Ebony magazines stacked in a corner of the living room, and Eleanor wandered into the room and picked up the January issue. A fighter plane was on the cover, and she flipped through the pages, and had stopped on an article called “The Abortion Menace,” when she heard a soft knock on the front door. Eleanor had hoped that her mother had not spread word that she was in town, because she wasn’t in the mood for a parade of company. She placed the magazine on the coffee table and looked through the glass hole. Her throat constricted at who she saw.

“I know you are in there, Eleanor. Please, open the door.”

Sighing, she turned the knob.

Rose stood on the slender wooden porch in a floor-length black mink coat and a matching hat adorned with a leather flower. She looked like a movie star who had been mistakenly dropped off at the wrong house, in the wrong town, in the wrong universe.

“Are you going to invite me in?” Rose blew on her hands. Eleanor knew that her mother would have her hide for being rude. She stepped aside so that Rose could enter her childhood home. Rose’s eyes appraised the shabbiness of the furniture in the front room. Taking in every nick and scratch from the years of use. Eleanor’s parents didn’t believe in replacing things until they were broken and beyond fixing. Whereas Rose replaced things with the seasons.

“So, this is where you come from?” Rose draped her coat and gloves over the arm of the recliner.

“How did you find me?”

“Sometimes a woman just needs to go home. Been there a time or two myself.”

Eleanor gestured for Rose to take a seat in the recliner, while she sank across from her on the orange sofa.

“Would you like some coffee or tea?” she offered, remembering her manners.

“No, thank you.”

There was a family portrait of Eleanor with her parents on the table, and Rose picked it up and studied it. Eleanor was sixteen in the photo. It was two years prior to her attending Howard University. Before she found out that Negroes like Rose Pride felt she’d been born on the wrong side of color, class and wealth.

“I know you think I’m a monster for orchestrating the adoption. I just wanted what was best for my son. And for you.”

“You don’t care about me, Rose. With just the two of us here, you can be frank.”

Rose cleared her throat. “I won’t lie. You were not my first choice for William. But, you have certainly grown on me. Let me tell you a little story. Do you have a few minutes?”

Eleanor nodded.

“My grandmother, Birdie, was born a slave. Her white father owned an infamous slave jail in Richmond and her mother, my great-grandmother, Pheby, was his mistress. Birdie was the only one of her three sisters who outright refused to pass for white. They went up north to attend college, but Birdie decided that she was going to stay back in Virginia and uplift her people. She married a doctor, my grandfather, who was so fair that he could have also passed for white, but he chose not to as well. My grandparents were able to build wealth and retain it because their near whiteness opened doors for them.”