House of Rougeaux(24)
The day after the movie, Sunday, Rosalie drops in on her cousin Nelie after church. Nelie is twenty-five and married, with a baby daughter, Lea. Rosalie has a shopping bag with some things for the baby that her mother gave her to bring up to Cornelia. Momma and Aunt Violet are the only ones that call Nelie by her full name.
Nelie and Cal have a little one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a row house about ten blocks from the Hubbards. It is tidy and comfortable with wonderful light in the front room from the south-facing windows. It’s late May and warm, so these windows are open. Rosalie, like most of Nelie’s visitors, doesn’t bother with the bell.
“Hey, Nelie!”
Her cousin sticks her head out. “Hey, Baby, come on up.”
Rosalie climbs the stairs and finds Nelie in the kitchen, in a cute little sleeveless dress and apron, fixing up a pan of potatoes for supper. The baby is lying on a blanket on the front room floor, trying to get herself up to crawling position. Rosalie sits down on the floor.
“Lea-Lea,” she coos, to the baby’s instant delight. No one can pass those fat little cheeks without putting at least thirty kisses on them. “Where’s Cal?”
“Up at Marty’s,” says Nelie. That’s Cal’s best friend. He and another friend of theirs go up there most Sunday afternoons. Roosting with the roosters, Nelie calls it. She’s not a big talker though, preferring to save her words for when they are most needed. Some people talk a lot without saying much, Rosalie has noticed, and some people say a lot with just a little. Her cousin Nelie definitely belongs to the second group, which is a lot more rare than the first.
Soon Rosalie hears voices from down on the street, two or three women, and then, “Nelie Porter!” called out from below. Porter is Nelie’s married name. It’s a friend of hers from the neighborhood along with a sister and a girlfriend, they want to come up and talk to Nelie about something important, if she has a minute. The three women don’t bother to wait for the answer though, and a moment later burst into the living room. Nelie asks Rosalie to mind Lea and takes the young women back to the bedroom. Nelie has visitors like these on a regular basis, women mostly. They need her advice on matters of the heart, and sometimes other business, money, health, the things that matter most to folks. Sometimes it’s playing the numbers, but Nelie doesn’t do that. Maybe she could, but that’s a dangerous territory, and a slippery slope, as they say in church.
Rosalie picks up a storybook that’s lying on the sofa and reads it to the baby. It’s not much of a story actually, just a dog and a ball and running and jumping, but Lea is enthralled. Her big brown eyes soak up everything and her babble makes Rosalie laugh, which makes the baby laugh, and they laugh together. Then Lea falls to one side, bopping her head, and starts to cry, until Rosalie plays Five Little Piggies with her and she smiles again. About a quarter of an hour later the bedroom door opens and the women emerge. The girlfriend is weeping into a handkerchief and the two others hustle her out the door clutching her arms on either side, calling back thank you! to Nelie, who sees them out.
“Her man’s running around like she thought,” says Nelie with a sigh, as she drops down onto the sofa. “She’ll be alright though, long as she don’t marry him.”
There’s some clatter on the stairs and Cal comes in, which makes the baby shriek with excitement. She knows her daddy’s footsteps. Cal is tall and thin like Junior, but broader in the shoulders. He kisses Nelie on the neck and hands her a brown paper bag with a few groceries. “Hey Little Momma,” he says to Rosalie, and scoops up Lea. “What’s shaking at high school?”
“Readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic,” says Rosalie.
“Okay, okay, what else?” Cal tries to steal a look at her between swats at his eyes from the baby.
“Got a newspaper article I’m working on about the new chess club at school.”
“Good game,” Cal grins, nodding his approval.
“We better get going,” says Nelie, “I want to bake these potatoes over at Aunt Virginia’s.” They head out together into the hall, Rosalie with the baking pan, Nelie with Lea, and Cal bumping the baby carriage around.
Out on the sidewalk, it’s a fine afternoon to be out walking. The flowers on Nelie’s dress catch the sunshine, and Rosalie thinks she may need one just like it. When they get to her house she’ll have to show Nelie what she’s done, with Momma’s help, with one of her sister’s cast-offs.
* * *
Sunday dinners at the Hubbard home are regular and lively occasions, rivalled only by the Sundays at the Montgomerys when Aunt Violet, Nelie’s mother, is hostess. In either case the participants are the same, the growing clan that centers around the two sisters, Virginia and Violet, and now includes the spouses, children, and sometimes friends. Not everyone makes it to every single dinner, but the seats around the table are always full, the conversation bubbling, and the grace always includes the line, May our cup continue to runneth over.
Most Sundays Rosalie’s big sister Loretta is there, making sure, together with Aunt Violet, that their mother doesn’t work too hard. Loretta has an apartment by herself, living the glamorous life of a switchboard operator at Bell Telephone. Her apartment is decorated in the latest style, with drapes and throw pillows in garish colors that Rosalie thinks are the ultimate, but that give the older generation a headache. The thing about Loretta is that she’s twenty-eight and unmarried, a fact that bothers exactly two people, her mother and her beau. Nearly every Sunday night, cleaning up after dinner Aunt Violet says, just to tease, “Ain’t Charlie proposed yet?” And Momma sighs, “Only about seven times. That girl is too independent for her own good.”