The House of Eve (40)
“Rubies for my Ruby,” I could hear him say. And it was beautiful. Placing the comb in my hair, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror that hung over the stained porcelain sink. Staring back at me was the white woman’s beet-red face, hissing at me. Nigger.
I removed the comb, ran into the kitchen and dropped it in the garbage. Then crashed the lid down, slamming it closed over and over again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN
Eleanor
From the moment Eleanor told William that she was pregnant, their lives had accelerated. Rose Pride had climbed behind the wheel and driven all of their future decisions at maximum speed. It was Rose who had decided that Eleanor and William would wed on the last Saturday in June, at St. Luke’s Episcopal, the Pride family home church, while Eleanor’s waist was still small enough to conceal their secret beneath a silk tulle wedding dress. Rose had even offered to fly Eleanor’s parents in on TWA for the ceremony.
But Eleanor’s mother was already chewing firewood over the nuptials taking place in D.C. rather than Elyria, at the little church where Eleanor had been baptized and spent her whole life. So when Eleanor called to make the gesture on Rose’s behalf, her mother coughed up flames.
“We can pay for our own tickets,” she huffed in a voice that told Eleanor that they would rather travel by bus and stay in a rented room atop the YMCA like poor little church mice than take a handout from her soon-to-be in-laws. She could hear in the way her mother had tsked against her teeth that she was thinking, Those damn uppity Negroes!
Although her sophomore year had ended, and she wasn’t enrolled in summer classes, Eleanor had secured a month of summer housing in her dormitory leading up to the wedding. Very few girls stayed on campus over the summer, and Nadine had returned to her parents’ home in Petworth, leaving Eleanor with the room to herself.
When Eleanor told Nadine that she was marrying William, Nadine had grabbed her hands and they jumped up and down until they were both breathless. Then she kissed her cheek and exclaimed, “You are going to be the talk of the town. Wait until I get my hands on you.”
“You know you have to be my maid of honor.”
“Ohio, with bells on girl, with bells on.” Nadine had beamed. But as she carried her last suitcase to the door, she had admitted to Eleanor, “When girls get married, they no longer have time for their single friends.”
“I’ll always have time for you,” Eleanor reassured her.
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to endure a new roommate. I am sure I won’t like her.”
“And I’m certain she won’t let you be as messy as me. So you better start picking up after yourself,” Eleanor teased.
“Promise we’ll lunch over the summer.”
Eleanor had promised, and it was a promise that she had intended to keep.
The peace, quiet and cleanliness that she returned home to each evening gave her too much space to sort through the melancholy that hung around the outer edges of her mind. Alone, she weighed the possibility that maybe things were happening too fast between her and William. They hadn’t even been dating a full year and already they were jumping the broom, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t escape the thought that twisted and churned deep inside her. She didn’t have the gumption to ask but desperately needed to know: Would William Pride still marry her if she wasn’t pregnant?
He’d assured her he would, but still, the question lingered, and she saw it floating in her bowl of oatmeal, scribbled on the tiles when she showered, in the books she read, flashing across her eyes when she closed them at night. Eleanor had lost the ability to be comfortable.
Rose Pride had insisted that she quit her job at Ware’s because no one in her precious circle of friends could think that her son was marrying a simple shopgirl, college educated or not, but Eleanor refused to give up her job at the library. Mrs. Porter promoted her to be her full-time research assistant, which gave her more hours and much more responsibility for the weeks leading up to her wedding. They were in the midst of sorting through materials related to Frederick Douglass for the assemblage, and Eleanor had spent her whole shift running back and forth from the collection center on the second floor to Mrs. Porter’s office on the third floor, carrying books, pamphlets and letters that had just been donated to them from a wealthy donor in Baltimore. When her shift ended, Eleanor crossed the yard feeling a slight ache in her abdomen and lower back. She had gotten used to the queasiness and was trying her best to deal with her inability to hold her breakfast down, the loss of appetite and just all-around crabbiness.
But this feeling, this was new. With each step the pain in her lower belly seemed to increase. Perhaps she had worked herself too hard. Tomorrow was Sunday and she would rest all day. Her pain would give her an excuse not to attend yet another brunch at the Prides’, where she didn’t feel like family. She hoped that their child would bridge the distance between them.
Eleanor had had no choice but to attend last week’s brunch, because Rose wanted to make the engagement announcement quickly, so as not to stir up talk. Greta and her family had attended, and when William Pride Senior asked everyone to raise their glass to the happy couple, Greta gave Eleanor a look so cold that it sent an instant chill down her back.
Later, when Eleanor was coming out of the downstairs powder room, Greta was waiting for her, again.