Woman of Light (62)
“How long do you think…until it’s over?” Luz asked.
“No idea,” David said in between sips. “If they’re doing a cross burning, this could go on until midnight or so.”
They both jerked as glass shattered in the front office, as if a brick had been thrown through the windows. David held his finger to his mouth. Shhhh, he mouthed and motioned for Luz to get under the desk. In case anyone should make it into the office, he whispered. Luz slinked from her chair and crawled over the rugs until she reached David’s desk, retreating deep into its walnut undercarriage. She pressed her body against the wood and looked out at her knees. Night had fallen, and beneath the desk it was dark, though just beyond, where David now crawled on his hands and knees, the room was a bluish gray.
When David entered the space, he pressed himself beside Luz. He smelled strongly of Ivory soap, his breath opulent with the aroma of black tea. Their bodies remained strict and silent—only the sounds of their heavy breathing passed between them. Luz prayed inside her mind that no one would enter the office, drag them out, beat them in the street—she imagined the horde, their jeers at the Greek lawyer and his spic clerk, lawing for the rights of the underclasses. Luz clenched her jaw to keep herself from crying out in fear. Then, from far off, they heard car horns and hollering, an indication that the march, the parade, the hate-fueled mob, was nowhere near finished. How long were they to stay there, packaged together like canned meat?
David faced Luz in the dark. “Are you okay?” he whispered.
Terrified to speak, she nodded.
“Good,” David said, and placed his palm on her right knee, cupping inward along her thigh. “Luz,” David said quietly. He then put his mouth on her neck, sending a pleasant shock from his lips all the way to her thighs, where his hand moved gradually beneath her dress, underneath her panties, and inside her body. Luz’s breathing changed, quickened and deepened. It happened so quickly. She had never experienced such a heavy want, and it pulsated through her entire body until a murmur of a moan fell from her lips. David covered her mouth with one hand and Luz found herself opening her lips to taste his palm. When he removed his hand, he pushed the whole fat worm of his tongue into her mouth. He began to remove her dress, working the zipper with such knowledge of women’s fashion that it was alarming. He moved his hands around her body, squeezed hard along her breasts.
Luz was jolted into dread. If she let him, David would take her virginity right there on his office floor, in the middle of a Klan march. “Stop,” Luz said. “We have to stop.”
“I understand,” David said, and slowly moved forward, biting down on her lip before moving out from under the desk and briskly standing up. It appeared the hollering outside had quieted.
“It seems to have cleared up,” he said. “I imagine we can go home now.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
A Day Without Work
It was Sunday and Luz had gotten up early and had a fried-eggs breakfast with Maria Josie before her auntie had gathered picnic supplies and fishing poles, heading out the door to meet her new friend, a woman named Ethel who drove a shiny Standard car. They were going to the mountains, to a blue lake. Ethel seemed to work as much as Maria Josie, and Luz rarely got to spend time with them, but she had taken a liking to the woman, a physician with a steadfast gaze behind dark-framed glasses. She had a wave of chestnut hair, and Maria Josie always came home from Ethel’s smelling of her gardenia perfume. Though Luz would never admit it to Maria Josie, she worried that Ethel could take her auntie away from her. Ethel lived in an Eastside bungalow, a far cry from the ramshackle Hornet Moon. It was only a matter of time, Luz feared, before Maria Josie packed her bags and left for good. Then where would Luz go?
At a little past eleven o’clock, Luz was startled by banging on the front door. She was shocked to find Lizette standing in the hallway, holding a garment sack, as if she had lugged a bagged corpse all the way from the Westside to Curtis Street.
“What’s that?” Luz asked.
Lizette was out of breath and sweating through her light blue dress, wet spots seeping around her underarms and in a line beneath her breasts. “It’s ready,” she said, and pushed her way past Luz. “Let’s open it in the kitchen, where the light is best.”
Luz figured inside the garment bag was another one of Lizette’s creations. Since she had gone to work for Natalya, the dressmaker had given Lizette the freedom to design several dresses and blouses and bring them to life, straight from her mind. In some ways, this seemed nothing short of a miracle—to be able to think something up, labor away, until one day that piece of clothing existed in the physical world.
Lizette scanned the kitchen with a critical eye. “Oh, that awful smell,” she said. “I don’t know how you get used to it.”
“Like the Westside smells any better with the train yards.”
“For one thing,” Lizette said, “it does smell better than carcasses. Most things do.” Lizette got to work shutting the kitchen window.
“What’re you doing?” Luz asked. “It’s hotter than hell!”
“I don’t want the smell seeping into my dress.”
“What dress?” Luz asked.
Lizette smiled in a mischievous and beautiful way. She returned to the garment bag and slowly lifted the bottom. A honey-colored wedding dress spilled forth.