The House of Eve (16)

Their lives were my window, and I knew from an early age that cleaning up after white folks wasn’t the path for me. I was going to be an optometrist so that I could discover the cure to fix Nene’s glaucoma and bring back her sight. I would be the first in our family to go to college, and when I came home with my various degrees, it would serve as proof that my father’s family had been wrong about me. And that Inez had been wrong about me, too.

Aunt Marie told me that when Inez had confessed to being pregnant at the tender age of fifteen, Nene cried and then slapped Inez across the face, saying, “I’m glad your father already went to be with the Lord, otherwise you’d drive him right up to the pearly gates yourself.”

Once Nene calmed down and came to grips with reality, there was only one thing for her to do. Insist that the boy do his honorable duty. Junior Banks was a good-looking young man, and his parents owned Bankses’ funeral home. They lived on the corner of 16th and York, in a row house with a wide front porch.

“At least you haven’t disgraced yourself with a common little nigga,” Nene had said—Aunt Marie had shared the whole story with me last summer over a game of cards and a few too many glasses of home-brewed hooch.

When my father’s mother, Mrs. Banks, opened the door, she didn’t even invite Nene and Inez in for tea. She just stood there, holding her storm door closed like she didn’t want them to see all the finery inside her house. Like they might try to steal something.

According to Aunt Marie, after Nene had cleared her throat and delivered the news, Mrs. Banks took one look at Inez, in her well-worn coat and wide-brimmed hat that made her look more like a sharecropper than a respectable young girl, and laughed in her face.

“There ain’t no way that Junior would lick his chops at the sight of you. Go find some other fool to claim your bastard.” Mrs. Banks was apparently still cackling when she closed her door.

Inez holed up in their apartment while Nene tried to figure out their next move. Aunt Marie told me that she was the one who went back a few days later and banged on the Bankses’ door, with the intention of knocking some sense into whoever answered. It was Mr. Banks who stood in the doorframe, informing her that Junior lived in Baltimore now and couldn’t possibly be the father.

He handed Aunt Marie a small envelope, “for your troubles.” And then he closed the door.

Inside was enough money to cover two months’ rent, and the matter was dropped. Six months after I was born, word traveled that Junior Banks had proposed marriage to a respectable woman.

I knew where the Banks lived, and I walked by their house on occasion, just to look at the well-kept porch with the hanging potted plants. When I earned my degree and became a doctor, I pictured that they would be down on their knees begging my forgiveness for abandoning me. They would see that I was good enough. Smart enough. Worthy of the last name, Banks, that they made sure Inez did not include on my birth certificate.

I was determined to prove myself, to give Nene her eyesight back—and to never have to depend on a man to keep a roof over my head like Inez. That’s why I worked so hard in the We Rise program and had to secure that full scholarship. Falling short was not an option, and this new friendship with Shimmy was a distraction that I couldn’t afford. I had to put him and those magnetic green eyes out of my mind. It wasn’t like I needed Mr. Greenwald or the rude woman to point out that Shimmy and I were not intended to mix. It was something I was born knowing.

For the next few days I kept my head in my schoolwork, and Shimmy brushing yellow on my painting and playing Wild Bill on the jukebox far from my mind. Then on the following Friday, I was sitting on Aunt Marie’s front steps when I looked up to see Shimmy emerging from the paint store on the corner, his hair falling over one eye, the other one fastened on me.

Without thinking, my hand reached up to touch my bangs, to make sure the wind had not blown them out of place. Open in my lap was a paperback copy of Twelfth Night, an assignment for my advanced English class at school. From the corner of my eye, I saw Shimmy slip closer. He was walking next to an older man who was favoring his left knee.

“Pop, I’ll wait for you out here.”

“I won’t be long,” said the man, looking straight ahead at the front door of the building. His face was shiny, his grip on the banister clumsy, and I caught a whiff of hard liquor seeping from his skin. I had seen him before, but hadn’t known he was Shimmy’s father. He was Aunt Marie’s landlord, and he came by to collect the rent money. The man had a reputation for being a drunk, and spent time up in Mr. Leroy’s apartment on the top floor drinking, sometimes until he passed out. Even in his liquored fog he was still a stickler for his money. He didn’t trust his tenants to pay at the end of each month, so he collected his money weekly.

Shimmy stood a few feet from the iron railing.

“Hi.”

I didn’t look up from my book, even though I could no longer make sense of the words on the page.

“Whatcha reading?”

I held up the cover. Willing him with my mind to go.

“I read that last year. Decent for Shakespeare.”

Then I couldn’t help myself. “Which of his is your favorite?”

“Probably Romeo and Juliet.”

“Why?”

“I’m a sucker for a forbidden love story.” He swept his hair out of his eye and smiled.