When No One Is Watching(52)

The walls are an elegant eggshell and the furniture all looks expensive and classy. A long window along the kitchen wall floods the entire floor with sunlight from the backyard. It looks like a picture from the Boomtown app, except there are Black people in the frame.

At the dining room table sit three elderly women and an even older man, judging by the number of wrinkles on his face. He moves his mouth in the familiar way of someone with uncomfortable dentures working them with his tongue. One of the women is thin and wearing a scarf on her head, another has her hair in a straight gray bob, and the third has one half of hers undone—the other half has been put into a boxer braid, a style Kim was crazy about after seeing it in some fashion magazine.

Candace goes to stand behind the woman and begins braiding the other half of her hair with quick efficient twists and pulls of her fingers and wrists.

“Who’s this man?” the woman with the scarf asks. There’s the slight singsong of Caribbean accent in her voice, but the wariness is unmissable. “Another come try to steal we homes?”

I don’t know how to respond so I look to Sydney.

“Hi, Miss Ruth,” she says, taking a seat at the table. “This is Theodore. He owns the house where the Paynes used to live.”

My name isn’t Theodore, but I nod in the woman’s direction anyway as I take a seat. “Nice to meet you, Miss Ruth.”

“Ah, it was the Payne house he took? I like him, then. I was so glad when that family left, let me tell you. I couldn’t stand Doris Payne, always thinking she better than everyone, trying to talk down her nose to me.” Miss Ruth’s accent grows harder to understand as she gets agitated, but I try to follow. “She look funny at my husband, asking him to come fix her kitchen sink and all that! I smack she black she white, and she never talk to him again.”

She nods decisively and the other women make noises of commiseration. I have no idea what she just said but I nod, too.

The old man works his dentures, then says, “Doris was a good woman in my book.”

“Of course you would say so, Fitzroy,” the woman with the gray bob says in an accent that could be British.

Sydney chuckles, an encouraging sign of life.

Candace shakes her head. “Theo, that’s Gracie and this is Paulette. Paulette don’t talk much.”

The woman getting her hair braided stays silent but keeps a wary gaze locked on me, even as Candace finishes her hair and pats her shoulder before taking her own seat.

“How are you doing, Sydney?” Gracie asks politely as she reaches for the teapot in the middle of the table and fills two cups before handing them to me and Sydney. “Haven’t talked to you much the last few months.”

“I’ve been busy,” Sydney says. “You know how it is.”

“Well, no, I don’t know, since I’m an old crone who spends my days watching stories with these miscreants, but I understand.”

That gets another laugh around the table, but Gracie’s blithe behavior doesn’t completely distract from the curious worry in her eyes.

I take a sip of the strong tea and try to keep my expression neutral as the bitter liquid hits my tongue, but something must give away my urge to do a spit-take because Gracie’s gaze meets mine with amusement dancing in her eyes. “Have you never had bush tea before, young man?”

“No,” I manage, eyes watering. “It’s . . . strong.”

“Good for the health,” Fitzroy says. “That’s why we old-timers are still here and kicking.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not poison,” Gracie adds, then tilts her head. “Not for us. But come to think of it, it is a recipe passed down from generation to generation, and back on the Bajan plantations it was called ‘buckra’s do-fa-do.’ Many slavers came to an unfortunate end after having a cup.”

Fitzroy snort-laughs. “Not enough of them, though!”

I wait for Gracie to laugh, too, and tell me she’s joking, but she just takes a sip of her tea and stares at me over the rim. I hold my cup awkwardly, knowing this is some kind of test but unsure whether it’s to see if I’m dumb enough to believe there’s a poison that works only on white people or dumb enough not to.

There’s a taut silence and then I think fuck it and take a sip.

Candace starts laughing, her eyes wide. “You think Gracie won’t poison you? Boy, this woman has gone through five husbands and I know some of them deaths wasn’t natural.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gracie says demurely. “I just wanted to see if the young man could take a ribbing.”

She winks at me, and though she’s maybe sixty-five, I fully understand why men kept marrying her even if she was possibly a murderer.

“Sydney!” Miss Ruth calls her name suddenly, like Sydney hasn’t been sitting across the table from her the whole time. “I heard you left that man of yours, the one with a forehead like that Black Star Trek alien. I say, ‘Good riddance.’ Good for you. Never liked the way he acted when he came around here.” She dusts her hands in an exaggerated motion, then claps.

Sydney’s chest heaves up and down before she opens her mouth to speak.

“Uh, thanks, Miss Ruth. I just had some questions about the neighborhood for the history tour,” she says. “Can we talk about that, please?”