The Vanishing Half(47)
“The colored fellow threatened to sue if he wasn’t let in,” Blake said. “Hired a big lawyer too. Got old Percy running scared.” He noticed her fallen face and squeezed her hip. “Aw, don’t look like that, Stel. It’ll be fine. I bet they won’t last a month here. They’ll see they’re not wanted.”
“But there’ll be more after them—”
“Not if they can’t afford it. Fred told me the man paid for that house in cash. He’s a different breed.”
He almost sounded as if he admired the man. But what type of person threatened to sue his way into a neighborhood where he would not be welcomed? Why would anyone insist on doing such a thing? To make a point? To make himself miserable? To end up on the nightly news like all those protesters, beaten or martyred in hopes of convincing white people to change their minds? Two weeks ago, she’d watched from the arm of Blake’s chair as cities across the country lit up in flames. A single bullet, the newscaster said, the force of the gunshot ripping off King’s necktie. Blake stared mystified at devastated Negroes running past flaming buildings.
“I’ll never understand why they do that,” he said. “Destroy their own neighborhoods.”
On the local news, police officials urged calm, the city still roiling from the Watts riots three years ago. She’d stepped into the powder room, a hand clasped over her mouth to muffle her crying. Was Desiree feeling hopeless on a night like this? Had she ever felt hopeful at all? The country was unrecognizable now, Cath Johansen said, but it looked the same as it ever had to Stella. Tom Pearson and Dale Johansen and Percy White wouldn’t storm a colored man’s porch and yank him out of his kitchen, wouldn’t stomp his hands, wouldn’t shoot him five times. These were fine people, good people, who donated to charities and winced at newsreels of southern sheriffs swinging billy clubs at colored college students. They thought King was an impressive speaker, maybe even agreed with some of his ideas. They wouldn’t have sent a bullet into his head—they might have even cried watching his funeral, that poor young family—but they still wouldn’t have allowed the man to move into their neighborhood.
“We could threaten to move out,” Dale said at dinner. He was rolling a cigarette between his fingers, peering out the window like a sentry on lookout. “How’d the association like that, huh? All of us, just up and leave.”
“Why should we be the ones to leave?” Cath said. “We’ve worked hard, paid our dues.”
“It’s just a tactic,” Dale said. “A negotiating tactic. We leverage our collective power—”
“You sound like a Bolshevik,” Blake said, smirking. Stella hugged herself. She had barely touched her wine. She wanted to think about anything other than the colored family moving in, which was, of course, the only thing that anyone could talk about.
“I’m glad you’re having a big laugh about all of this,” Dale said. “Just wait until the whole neighborhood looks like Watts.”
“I’m telling you it’ll never happen,” Blake said, leaning over to light Stella’s cigarette. “I don’t know why you all are getting so worked up.”
“It better not,” Dale said. “I’ll see to that.”
She couldn’t tell what unnerved her more, picturing a colored family moving in or imagining what might be done to stop them.
* * *
—
DAYS LATER, a yellow moving van crept slowly up the winding streets of the Palace Estates, halting at each intersection, in search of Sycamore Way. From her bedroom window, Stella peered through the blinds as the van parked in front of the Lawsons’ house. Three lanky colored men climbed out the back in matching purple shirts. One by one, they unloaded a leather couch; a marble vase; a long, furled rug; a giant stone elephant with a flared trunk; a slender floor lamp. An endless parade of furniture and no family in sight. Stella watched as long as she could until her daughter sidled up behind her and whispered, “What’s happening?” As if they were playing some spy game. Stella jolted away from the blinds, suddenly embarrassed.
“Nothing,” she said. “Want to help Mommy set the table?”
After weeks of worrying, her first encounter with the new neighbors was both accidental and unremarkable. She ran into the wife early the next morning while ushering her daughter out the door for school. She was distracted, trying to balance a diorama as she locked the door, and she almost didn’t notice, at first, the pretty colored woman standing across the street. She was neat and slender, pecan-colored, her hair bobbed like one of the Supremes. She wore a goldenrod dress with a scooping neckline, and she held the hand of a little girl in a pink dress. Stella paused, clutching the shoebox diorama against her stomach. Then the woman smiled and waved, and Stella hesitated before finally lifting her hand.
“Nice mornin,” the woman called. She had a slight accent—midwestern, maybe.
“Yes, it is,” Stella said.
She should introduce herself. None of the other neighbors had, but her house was right across the street—she could practically see into the woman’s living room. Instead, she nudged Kennedy toward the car. She gripped the wheel tightly during the whole drive to school, rewinding the conversation in her head. That woman’s easy smile. Why did she feel so comfortable speaking to Stella in the first place? Did she see something in her, even across the street, that she felt like she could trust?