The House of Eve (53)

“Esther Hoffman called to say you’d been sneaking a Colored girl through the back door. I didn’t believe it for a second. She must have mistaken my Shimmy for someone else. Well! I see how wrong I was!”

“Ma, I can explain,” Shimmy pleaded, but his shoulders were hunched with shame.

I wanted nothing more than for the floor to open and sweep me away.

“Put some clothes on,” she shouted. Then she turned her back and walked to the front of the store.

Shimmy and I dressed quickly and silently. I scrambled to my feet, smoothed my skirt and touched my hair knowing that not much would change even as I fingered it. Shimmy led and I followed him out.

Mrs. Shapiro was a petite woman with thin lips and dark shoulder-length hair. Her eyes were so black with fury that she looked like she would murder me on the spot if she were sure she could get away with it.

“Ma, this is not what you think it is,” said Shimmy, taking a step toward her.

“How could you possibly know what I am thinking?”

“I love her,” he said forcefully.

Shimmy’s declaration in front of his mother surprised me. He hadn’t taken the easy way out. He’d meant what he said about wanting to be with me. But I could see that his words didn’t mean doodly-squat to his mother. She was looking at me like I was the filthy muck stuck to the bottom of her designer shoe.

“Foolish boy. You don’t know what love is yet.”

“I know how she makes me feel.”

“I bet I know how she makes you feel,” she said, summing up my voluptuous breasts and curvy hips with her hands. Like I was nothing more than an object—a Negro vixen—that tempted good boys like Shimmy into trouble.

“Get your things and let’s go,” she said as she grabbed Shimmy’s ear.

“Ma.” He stepped back and looked at me and then to his mother. “She’s having my baby.”

My heart dropped. Shimmy’s confessing to his mother made it real. It pushed me one step further from my dreams of attending Cheyney. But then Mrs. Shapiro’s face rearranged itself into horror. I had never seen another person so wounded before, and in that moment, I regretted for her sake ever taking up with her son. She dropped her head into her gloved hands.

“Ma, don’t be upset.” Shimmy reached to hold her up. “I will make this right. I’ll marry her.”

She recoiled from his hand like it was the head of a snake, hissing between clenched teeth, “Marry her? She’s Colored, you blind fool.”

“It’s Negro, Ma, and that doesn’t matter to us.” He reached for my arm, but I had the good sense to pull away. I didn’t want to add to his mother’s dismay.

“What difference does it make? You are the heir of our family. How could you bring such dishonor to our name? As if your father wasn’t already doing enough damage.” She started murmuring words in Yiddish that I didn’t understand.

“Stop it, Ma.”

She gathered herself, fixing her gaze on me. “Little girl, go home. Tell no one about your situation. You will hear from me shortly.” She took a step toward me, and I braced myself to be slapped, but she reached into my hair and snatched out the antique ruby comb Shimmy had given me.

“A thief too? I believe this belongs to me.”

I hadn’t thought it was possible to be more humiliated, but I was. I hurried through the back door as fast as I could. The garbage from the dumpster out back stunk something awful and I gagged, then threw up.

In a daze, I trampled through the neighborhood. I wished I could erase it all. I was disgusting, a slut. What the hell had I been thinking? This was damned from the start. Aunt Marie warned me, but I hadn’t listened, and now I had gotten burnt, just as she’d predicted.

Despite the fact that it was a sticky July night, my body broke out in a cold sweat. I wandered the streets, which were crowded with people everywhere—sitting on the steps smoking cigarettes, leaning against cars with bottles hidden in brown bags, singing, cussing and trying to be heard over blasts of music.

There was a beer garden up ahead on the corner, and the blues floated through the opened windows. Three men stood outside passing a reefer joint between them while rolling dice on a piece of cardboard against the brick building. They snapped their fingers sharply after each throw.

“Hey, good-looking. Come over here so I can buy you a drink,” one called out to me. He wore his hat low over his eyes and had a gold ring on his left pinky.

“With a body like that, I’ll buy you two,” said his friend wearing shades, and they all cackled and hooted.

I picked up my pace.

“You too good to stop?” the first man, with his hat slung low, called.

The man in shades snorted. “She too good for you.”

That must have wounded the other man’s pride, because next thing I knew Hat Slung Low started to follow me. “Hey. Hey girl. Don’t you hear me talking to you?”

“Leave me the hell alone,” I mustered with all the rancor I felt from my night.

The man stopped, stunned, and I took off running. I pumped my legs hard, turning corner after corner to make sure he wasn’t following me. When I finally slowed down to catch my wind, I was a half block from Inez’s apartment. How in the world had I ended up here, a place that had never really been my home?