The House of Eve (45)

I had not planned to lose my virginity to Shimmy on the floor in Greenwald’s, on the red checkered tablecloth. But when he hiked up my skirt, I could no longer contain the tension that had been building inside of me ever since he walked into Aunt Marie’s house to fix the sink. Without thinking about what could go wrong, what I might be giving up, I let myself go. I let him have all of me.

After our first time together, Shimmy had cradled my face. I liked the way we smelled afterward. Our secret was fragrant, filled with notes of our connection.

“I’m so in love with you, Ruby, it’s hard to see straight.”

I knew exactly what he meant, because as Aunt Marie would put it, I couldn’t see for shit.



* * *



Aunt Marie finished cleaning the rest of the club herself, never even looking at me. Afterward, we didn’t talk the whole bus ride home. When we got to the apartment, she put on a pot of water and made two cups of tea.

“Sit down,” she said, finally cracking the icy silence between us.

I pulled a chair to the table and accepted the cup. Aunt Marie lowered herself into the chair across from me and wiped at her forehead with the kitchen rag she kept hanging from the stove.

“Edna from across the street told me Shimmy been sniffing round here. Is it his?”

Ashamed, I looked into my black tea.

“Goddamn it, Ruby.”

My hope was that the stress from sneaking around with Shimmy, keeping up with We Rise and working for Aunt Marie had made my friend late. But the tenderness of my breasts, the way I couldn’t hold anything down signaled otherwise. Aunt Marie had always been the type of person who knew things before folks opened their mouths, so her reaction was all I needed to confirm my deep-seated suspicion.

“White boys too good to use condoms?”

I kept my head bowed, because I couldn’t stand the disappointment that I knew swam in her dark eyes. What difference would it make that the condom broke? I had been the family’s piece of hope, the one smart enough to go to college, the girl to make three generations of tired, poor, Negro women proud.

When I still didn’t answer, Aunt Marie sucked hard on her teeth. “Well, I know someone who can make this go away. I’ll find out if it’s what you want?”

I knew enough about what happened to girls who got into trouble to know what she meant.

“Ain’t that illegal?”

“Lots of things illegal. Don’t make it wrong. You should know—sneaking around with a damn Jewish boy for Christ’s sake.”

I nodded, trying not to show that her words had landed hard against the side of my head.

“I need to hear your answer, girl. This ain’t kiddie play.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you want me to look into making it go away?”

“Please.” I scrunched my toes up in my socks. If Inez had looked into making me go away, maybe her life would have turned out better. The heaviness of it all flooded me instantly, and before I could wipe the water from my face, Aunt Marie was on my side of the table, enveloping me in her girth.

“Auntie will take care of everything. It’s going to be all right, sweetness.”



* * *



The next evening, Aunt Marie came home early from work and announced, “Got you that appointment.”

“When?”

She removed her chandelier earrings. “Tonight. Go in my room and rest for an hour, we’ll head out round ten.”

“I’m scared.”

Aunt Marie’s caramel-colored face looked ashen. Like she was weary down in her soul, and I regretted having to drag her into this. She squeezed my shoulder before I went back to her bedroom and stretched out, wondering what the procedure would be like. I knew it would hurt and I pictured a lot of blood. I didn’t want to die trying to rid myself of a child that I did not want. Like Inez had not wanted me.

It was not lost on me that we were almost the same age when it happened. Inez had gotten pregnant with me at fifteen, and I had only made it one more year and some months before suffering the same fate. Aunt Marie always said the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Had Nene wanted Inez to go to college, too? Did she have a promising future that I messed up? I tried not to think about the thing growing inside of me as an actual person. I chose to look at it as a roadblock, one that was in the way of getting me to college. And I couldn’t be detoured.

We caught the trolley, and then transferred to the 17 bus that carried us into South Philly. Once Aunt Marie pulled the cord signaling our stop, we walked three blocks to Tasker, and then ducked around the corner onto Gerritt Street, a tiny one-way with a broken streetlight at the corner. The house with the black-and-white awning and silver storm door was in the middle of the block. Aunt Marie knocked two times and then waited a beat, then tapped two more. A young girl with braids answered the door.

“Here to see Leatrice.”

The child let us in. There was a man with gray whiskers passed out in a recliner, snoring in tune with the radio. An empty fifth of Inver House sat on the coffee table in front of him. Through the dining room, there was a door to the left that led to the basement. I followed Aunt Marie down the narrow stairs that shifted and groaned under our feet. At the foot of the steps, I saw a tucked-in twin bed on one side and a bar on the other. The room smelled of raw liver, dried blood and urine. A frail woman wearing a gauzy white dress with a scarf knotted on her head stood up, waving her palms at us.