JEWEL (35 page)

“That where you’re talking about, Momma? ” “Yes, ” I said. I leaned forward, touched Leston’s shoulder. “You know where I mean? ” I said.

“You want to buy furniture already, and we haven’t yet bought the house.” He wouldn’t look back at me, wouldn’t even glance at me in the rearview mirror, only held tight to the steering wheel. .

But I was bound and determined right then to touch what he’d started to let sour in him, wanted to let him know that now we were here, now we were going to own a house in California, now that his children were in schools out here and his second oldest son in fact co-owned our house, there was nothing he could do to drag us down with him. I wasn’t going to sit in an empty bed for years waiting for him to come up from the kitchen anymore.

I leaned back in the seat, looked out my window, and gave up a smile, one that built in me some small beginning of relief, because our family, no matter how broken it seemed now, no matter how scattershot and tentative and cracker Mississippi we seemed, was coming to order.

I could see it taking shape now, saw it in the palm trees out there that lined the street on this particular stretch of Washington Boulevard and how tall they stood, how smooth the line they made from the sidewalk to the tops of the fronds up there. I could see the way our life was taking shape, too, in how Burton sat up next to his daddy, a boy who’d had enough resolve in him to make his way out here, set up his life, sign that paper as a result of it.

Our family was taking shape before my eyes, taking on order, though that order would never fall full into line, not until I’d finished the last thing I had to do, the one thing that scared everything in me near to pieces when I thought on it. But once the papers would be signed on the house, once we’d buy furniture and have it delivered, once I’d be cooking on a stove in a kitchen in a stucco house I’d fry up thick steaks, I decided at that moment, steaks with home fries and corn on the cob for our first dinner in our new house there would be only that last lone task before all would be straight.

I’d take Brenda Kay to the Exceptional Children’s Foundation, a place on Adams Avenue, off Western.

So far, those two street names meant nothing to me. I’d been too scared to look at a map, too scared even to ask Leston or Burton, because what I’d found and I’d told no one yet, hadn’t told Wilman or Burton or Annie, and there’d be no way I would tell Leston this was that the National Association for Retarded Children, those people I’d dreamed on saving our lives for the past three years, was only an office in a building somewhere in downtown Los Angeles, and that there wasn’t much they could do for me, other than point me to this other organization, the Exceptional Children’s Foundation.

I’d called them from a pay phone at a gas station near the motel one afternoon the second week we were there, Leston gone job hunting, Wilman over to Bundy Mufflers, where he sat sipping on a Nehi Orange most afternoons and watched his brother work. The boss there didn’t seem to mind, and I couldn’t figure any better thing for him to do while Leston was out with the car.

I left Annie with Brenda Kay in the room, Brenda Kay asleep on the far bed. Annie’d sighed and pouted and carried on about having to babysit like every time I had an errand to run or work to go to, but then I stood at the motel room door, and pulled from my purse the brochures I’d carried with me these years, the ones on the National Association for Retarded Children and all they could do for us.

“This is why we’re here, ” I whispered hard to her, and held them up, the paper limp and tired in my hand. “These are the people who’re going to help us, help your sister. And you will watch over her, and you will do as I say.”

Annie crossed her arms, still held the pout. She turned, went to the bed, fell back on it. She had on jeans and Wilman’s white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up, her red hair spilled back behind her on the motel’s ugly yellow bedspread.

“Yes ma’am, ” she said to the ceiling, and I tried and tried to see in her the little girl who’d given up her nye-nye so many long years ago to that sleeping sister in the next bed, but could not.

I left her, pulled the door shut behind me. I still held the brochures in my hand, crossed the motel parking lot to the Shell station right there on the corner, and went to the phone booth.

I closed the glass door. It was hot inside, afternoon sun in through the glass, and I thought I smelled somebody’s vomit. I looked down at my feet, pulled back the hem of my dress to see if I was standing in it. I couldn’t see it anywheres, but I knew that’s what it was.

Somebody’d thrown up in here.

But I still kept the door closed. This was the phone call, the only one that’d matter for the rest of our lives. I didn’t want the street sounds out there cutting in on this moment, didn’t want car horns and brakes screaming out to destroy this.

I put in my nickel, dialed the operator, asked for information. I told the woman at the other end the address for the National Association for Retarded Children, felt my eyes going hot as she gave me the number.

Then I called.

“N-A-R-C, ” a woman answered, and I’d been only silent, not certain what I needed to say, though I’d rehearsed it in my head enough times, Hello, I have a daughter who’s…

“Hello? ” the woman said again, and I finally managed to open my mouth, said, “Hello? ” “Yes? ” she said. “Can I help you? ” “I hope so, ” I’d said, and then, half-crying, half-laughing, I’d sputtered out all it was I had to say, about how we’d moved here. for them, how we’d planned to get Brenda Kay there as soon as we could, how I’d read in the Reader’s Digest all about these medications and about “But Miss, ” the woman cut in, and suddenly I heard how long I’d been running, how many words I’d let spill. “I’m sorry, ” I said. “I’m so sorry I just ” “The service we provide, ” she started in, me still with more words lined up in me, three years’ worth of words ready to go, “is as an umbrella group of sorts. We publish a newsletter bimonthly, work to keep abreast of new research in the field of mental retardation, and otherwise refer specific cases to specific groups. We’re not equipped here to ” I couldn’t hear her words then, for a moment the notion in me that the telephone connection’d gone bad, or that maybe I’d called the wrong place altogether. But just as quick it came to me, this was the rush of blood through me, the sound three years of hope made leaving me, Research. Umbrella Group. Not Equipped.

“Hello? ” the woman was saying, and I opened my eyes, though I hadn’t known they were closed.

I looked around, saw the cars on Pico, saw the Shell station with its rows of bright cans of oil in the window, stacked so perfect it seemed they might be the only thing in the world that meant anything, a perfect row of cans, labels all facing out and straight.

“Hello? ” the woman said again.

“I’m here, ” I said into the receiver, though I’d figured she’d see through my words, see that, in fact, I was not here, was nowhere.

“I suggest you visit the people out at the Exceptional Children’s Foundation, located at two-one-five-one Adams Boulevard, just before you hit Western, ” the woman went on. “Mr. Nathan White is his name, ” she said, “and after some preliminary testing, they might very well enroll your child there.”

I swallowed hard, closed my eyes again. I tried hard to concentrate on her words, on what she’d offered up to me, and only then did I take in her word, Enroll.

I said, “Enroll? ” “Yes, ” she said.

I said, “Mr. White? “

“Nathan White, ” she said.

So I let myself smile as we drove away from the bank and all the papers we’d had to sign, though my smile was just a small one. I said to my husband, “You know where I’m talking about. Pico Furniture.”

I turned a moment from the window to see what his reaction might be, and caught him looking at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes jumped away as soon as he saw me looking.

I picked out two single beds for the girls’ room, a fold-out sofa bed Wilman’d sleep on in the living room, a double bed for our bedroom, picked out, too, a big overstuffed chair for the living room, a dinette set for the kitchen.

And then, once we were up and ordering our furniture, putting money down on it, money perfectly fine with these people, perfectly acceptable, the man at the counter tilted his head one way, looked at Leston, and said, “You wouldn’t be new to Los Angeles, would you? ” Burton’d been leaning back in an easy chair a few feet away, and I heard him say, “They’ve been here only a little more than a month so far.”

Leston, next to me, had his wallet out, in his hand the dollars that would fill our house. He blinked, his head bowed to the wallet.

Then Burton was next to him, put his arm round his daddy’s shoulder.

The man at the counter said to Leston, “Would you be in need of a job?

” He stopped, folded the wallet, held it in his hands. Slowly he raised his head, looked the man square on. Burton’d let his arm drop, had lost the smile he’d had, too. We both knew what was going on here, Burton and me, and he gave a glance over at me. He took a small step away from his daddy, who was putting the wallet back into his pants pocket.

This was a moment could go either way, I knew. Either Leston’d want to leave California because of this moment, this humiliation unfolding with no help from us at all, or we would stay in California because of this job unfolding with no help from us at all. This moment.

And in that moment I thought of those streets, Western and Adams, thought of that row of oil cans, and of my son Burton and his tie and jacket, and found in all those pictures in my head that it was me, too, making a decision right here, right now. I decided that, no matter how much more humiliation my husband would feel, if he turned down this job, I’d step in front of him, and tell that man behind the counter Yes, indeed, he would take the job. I’d make a fool out of my husband and me both, I was bussing tables, making my piddly money each day while he drove our new car back and forth through Los Angeles. He’d take this job, whether he wanted it or not.

Leston looked at him, took in a breath. He said, “Depends, ” and I felt my hands clutching tight my purse, felt my heart go faster.

“Driving is what we need. A driver, man who can handle big trucks.

Some lifting, too. But it’s a driver we need.” The man crossed his arms, and smiled at Leston. “There’s just too much happening here these days, too much the boom. We need people.”

“I know trucks, ” he said, and smiled, still without looking at me or his son.

I took a deep breath, felt how hot my neck and face had gone thankful I didn’t need to do what I’d resolved. Thankful, too, for whatever slow coming around my husband seemed to make here in the showroom of Pico Furniture.

CHAPTER 25.

FRANK WAS THE NAME ON HIS KHAKI SHIRT, HIM LOCKING THE DOOR OF our house in California behind him, then turning to Brenda Kay and me. I’d dressed Brenda Kay up in one of the outfits I’d bought back in Purvis, and we’d gone out to the Plymouth parked there in the short driveway the tail end of the car actually hung out over the sidewalk, the drive was so short and waited for Leston to come out.

It’d taken me this long almost two months to get up the nerve to finally take this step, to finally find in me the stone piece of resolve I’d thought was so full in me all these years of persuading my husband we needed to move here.

But for two months I’d found things to do, things to do, settling us all in until there was no more settling to do, no more reason or time to put off what it was we’d moved here to do. Now here was the time, the day.

Leston was going to drive us to Pico Furniture, then I was going to take the Plymouth to Adams and Western and the Exceptional Children’s Foundation, a place I’d never been to, a place I’d never called, too afraid of what they might say.

And there he was in his Pico Furniture uniform, somebody else’s name stitched in red thread above the front shirt pocket. But it was a clean shirt, pressed last night with the new iron I’d bought over to the Sears Roebuck the week before, along with the ironing board and the pots and pans and glasses and dishes and all else went into creating a new life in a new world. We’d started with the $6, 700, then’d bought the car for $1, 600, given $100 to Gower and Billie Jean, spent $120 on the trip out, paid $1, 200 down on the house, spent $230 on food and the motel for that month and on gas and what have you while we were trying to buy the house, then’d handed over another $1, 000 for the furniture and everything that went into filling up an empty house, then around $600 for a refrigerator and stove and washer and dryer, the washer and dryer hooked up on the porch out back, Wilman and Leston building a two-by-four and plywood roof to cover them both.

That’d left us with a little under $2, 000 to begin, but each week saw bits of that money flaking away, what with food for us all and books for Wilman and Annie, more clothes for Annie, who, it’d turned out, decided she’d bought all the wrong things back in Purvis, where that Myrtle Bancroft in the dress shop, in Annie’s words, “wouldn’t know fashion if it ran over her on Sunset Boulevard.” And that word enroll kept coming back to me, its weight and value solid and good in my heart, but the idea of the cost that word carried right along with it something I hadn’t counted on.

A million things were going on then, our children’s lives swirling up and into movement, the first piece of mail we got at the new house had been a letter from Billie Jean telling of how she’d already settled herself into married life in Purvis, though Gower was on the road most days of the week. They were planning on having kids right away, which made my heart fall and rise at the same time, who knew if they were ready, but, once those kids were there, wouldn’t that make them ready?

We’d talked on the telephone to James and Eudine, got word Eudine was farther along than they’d expected, that the next baby was due any day rather than two weeks from now, like the doctor’d first said. Burton was dating five or six girls at once, had managed even to hook up with one Julie Hesmer, daughter of the owner of Bundy Mufflers.

Wilman’d walked on to the field for football practice at Venice High School the first day of school, and’d ended up being a starter at fullback, Annie’d already ingratiated herself with a clutch of giggling girls at the junior high, though I hadn’t met any of them yet, only’d answered the phone an endless number of times to have some little chatty girl at the other end say, “Umm, is Annie they-err? ” and then laugh, doing the best to imitate the drawl Annie’d brought with her and, it seemed, was maybe even more pronounced now we were here. Maybe that was how she’d got in good with whoever these girls were, her posing as a Southern Belle at school. Who knew?