The House of Eve (21)
CHAPTER SEVEN TREADING WATER
Ruby
Aunt Marie wasn’t home, so I had the place to myself as I got ready to go out for the evening to meet Shimmy. We had spent all of Saturday afternoon cleaning the apartment, and my fingers were stiff as I combed through my hair. She’d had me scrub the grease-splattered wall behind the stove with vinegar and water until the chipped paint peeled even more. Then I mopped the cracked linoleum floors. There were so many buckling crevices that the floors were never really clean, but I did what I could. After Aunt Marie sponged down what passed as the bathroom, together we scooped the smut from the furnace and dumped it inside an old tire in the backyard with the other piles of neighborhood debris.
Before she left for work, we shared a hot dinner of okra, corn and tomatoes, but in all our hours together I never asked for permission to leave the house. Partly because Aunt Marie would have told me no, and more specifically because I was leaving to see Shimmy, a white Jewish boy who on every day of the week was off-limits to me. It wasn’t like we were planning to go steady or anything, we were just meeting as friends, and I thought it best not to get Aunt Marie’s panties all ruffled into a bunch over nothing. In hindsight, I probably should have said something, because I could feel guilt knotting up in my chest as I slipped a sloppy joe sweater over my head. Bobby socks and saddle shoes finished off my look.
I had inherited a pretty decent hand-me-down wardrobe from Inez’s white employers, and was handy with a needle and thread so I could make my own adjustments. As a final touch, I clipped on a pair of Aunt Marie’s pearl earrings and spread on a thin layer of her pink lipstick.
Aunt Marie only wore cologne, and nothing I fingered on her nightstand smelled remotely feminine, so the mixture of Ivory soap and Jergens lotion would just have to do. That was one of the many ways Aunt Marie and my mother differed. Inez had sweet-smelling lotions, talcum powder and toilet water for every day of the week. She even wore perfume to clean up after people. Told me it made her feel like a whole person and not just some hired jigaboo.
It was near eight when I got downstairs, and night had fallen. I toyed with my bangs, fluffing then smoothing them as I watched the street. Loose newspapers, candy wrappers and soda cans tumbled against each other, rustling over the concrete, swept through by the wind. I could hear the baseball game on in one of the first-floor apartments, and the fragrance of slow-cooked pork turned my stomach sour. I knew it was my nerves.
I had never done anything so crazy before. Sneaking out. I was being reckless and foolish, going God knows where with this boy. No good could come of it, and I was just wasting precious time when I should be studying the six functions of angles and better understanding my trigonometry. But then I saw headlights, followed by a light blue Ford Crestline. The car slowed to a crawl and then turned into the side alley. It was Shimmy.
There was still time to walk back up the stairs and forget this whole thing. Instead, I counted to ten, then took a long exhale and opened the front door. As I hurried down the steps and around to the side of the building, I glanced about, praying that no one who knew Aunt Marie had seen me leaving the house unchaperoned this time of night.
The narrow alley was nothing more than a slit between two buildings, and smelled like cat piss, fish grease and beer. I had to sidestep a broken bottle as Shimmy leaned over and pushed the passenger door open for me.
“I’m getting in the back seat.”
“Why?”
“?’Cause if you want to hang out, we gotta be smart.” I pushed the front seat forward and slipped into the back. Shimmy pulled the door closed behind me and then slowly tunneled the car through the alley.
I squatted down in my seat so that I couldn’t be seen through the window. If anyone saw Shimmy driving, they would think he was riding alone.
“So glad you came. I didn’t know if you’d show.” His voice cracked as he spoke over his shoulder. If he had only known how many times I’d thought of reneging.
“How are we going to pull this Dell thing off?”
“You’ll see.”
I didn’t know if I should just trust him or demand to know more. The most comfortable way to sit without being seen was with my legs stretched to the left and my head and torso to the right. The seats were plush and smelled smokey, like new leather with just a hint of pine. I couldn’t help but run my fingers over the buttery cushion, quickly realizing that this was the finest car I had ever ridden in.
“How was your day?” he asked.
My anxiety from sneaking out made the words run from my mouth like a rushing spring. I told Shimmy all about the We Rise program, and how I had to miss the field trip to the hospital that morning with my cohort.
“Instead of learning from real doctors, I just sat in an empty classroom doing work I could have easily done with my eyes closed. It was a waste of hard-earned carfare,” I complained.
Shimmy pulled the car to a stop and turned off the engine. I could hear loud music playing from in front of us and lifted my head up to the window to see where we were. A side street near a park.
Shimmy turned his body toward me so I could see his face. “You want to be a doctor?”
“An optometrist.”
“Why?”
“My grandma went blind a few years ago, and I want to learn to fix her. Or people like her—probably too late for her to get her sight back, but I’m holding out hope.”