Club Storyville (13 page)

“After you,” she motioned her upturned hand toward the bathroom, and confused by the offer, I could only stare at her as she gazed past my shoulder.

“You were here,” I said.

“But you should go first,” she stated matter-of-factly, dropping her hand and her gaze.

It was then I understood Ariel and I could never just be two white women staying at a colored boarding house. We were Jim Crow. We brought him in off the streets with us to a place that should have been refuge, putting rules into place that would have otherwise existed only on the other side of the front door.

“I don’t want to go first,” I told her, and, in that instant, I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want to be part of that system, the one that always turned in my favor, just or not. I wanted to go in the order in which we came, to play fair. “Please,” I insisted, and, gaze distrusting as she glanced up at me, the colored lady went into the bathroom and I heard the click of the lock behind her.

The feeling I had done the right thing was short-lived, when the lady was in and out of the bathroom so fast I realized just my presence outside the door had made her feel as if she had to hurry, and I knew then Ariel and I were wrong just to be there.

B
ack in the room that was temporarily ours a few minutes later, I found Ariel already dressed for bed. Robe cinched at her waist and toiletries in hand, she left to finish up her nightly routine in the bathroom, and I used her absence to slip out of my own robe, hanging it within reach on the bed post, and slid under the covers, pulling the sheet high for cover, despite the heat.

I didn’t consider it might be an unwise thing to do until I heard the turn of the door handle, and for a brief moment, until I saw Ariel’s strawberry blonde hair, it occurred to me it could be anyone coming through the door, a total stranger walking in while I was disrobed and vulnerable in bed.

It was the kind of thing Ariel would have known better than to do, I thought, as she looked toward me and turned off the light, and I struggled for breath, the covers feeling tight against my chest as I faked normal.

By the light outside the window, I could see Ariel take her robe off and hang it on a knob on the dresser, and, when she moved to the window to pull the curtains better closed, the light shined through her thin gown, turning her body into a silhouette beneath it. Longing unlike anything I had ever felt going through me as Ariel tugged the curtains all the way together, I could hear more than see her make her way back to the bed, and I wondered how she could find her way in the unfamiliar space. Then, I felt the movement of the mattress that proved she had made it safely, and Ariel was like a force of nature around me, too present and overpowering to ignore.

Her deep sigh as she settled against her pillow filled my head with thoughts pervasive enough I could almost forget what had happened in the hallway, and I held painfully still, afraid of what might happen if I touched her by accident, more afraid of how much I wanted to find out what would happen if I touched her on purpose.

“Maybe we should find someplace else,” I said, not sure which feeling was more responsible for the words in my mouth, the fearful desire I felt lying next to her, or the guilt that I had the power to destroy a place’s comforts for an entire group of people just by being there.

“Okay,” Ariel whispered, and there wasn’t enough in the brief reply to know what she truly thought.

Jostled as she shifted, I suffered the hope Ariel might turn toward me, make me forget everything that lay outside the bedroom door, but, when she settled, I could tell she had turned away. Without more words between us, I could only imagine why, and all the reasons I had given her to turn her back on me kept me awake for quite some time.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he hours I passed in the night were long and only partly restful. Not used to sharing a bed with anyone, I was woken repeatedly by Ariel. Though, each time I came to, she would be lying as still as a mannequin, and, for a while, I would lie awake watching her not move beside me, until I finally realized it was simply her existence, and not her motion, that kept drawing me from sleep.

Eyes blinking open sometime before dawn to find Ariel turned toward me, eyes closed, lips slightly open, it was all I could do to stifle the urge to shift forward, to press my mouth to her mouth and inhale her surprised breath as she awakened to my kiss like the maiden in a fairy tale.

Allowing my hand to alight upon her shoulder, my fingertips feathering their way down the exposed skin of her arm, I kept my eyes on Ariel’s serene face to make sure she didn’t wake and pretended we were there together by choice.

The lights and shadows played over Ariel’s cheeks and chin and eyelids in the early morning hour, and I was her lover, watching her while she slept, imagining ways to keep her happy and at my side forever.

Hand turning as it came to her wrist, the backs of my fingers dragged up Ariel’s forearm, her soft skin soothing something inside me I didn’t realize had been aching.

“I love you,” I whispered, because I could never say it under the same roof as my mother and father, and I wanted to know if it sounded true. The sheer rush of joy I felt at the admission was smothered by the crushing realization that followed, because it did sound true, and it felt true, and it meant nothing.

The world would still be the world in the morning, what I felt was still wrong, and no amount of pretending was going to change anything.

W
hen it actually was Ariel’s movement that woke me, it was true morning, and, as I opened my eyes in the sunlight sneaking in at the window, Ariel looked better rested than she had in days, maybe even weeks, as if she was unbothered, in any meaning of the word, by my proximity in the night.

Up and in her robe before I was even fully functional, she announced that she was going to get dressed and left the room in a flurry, ready to embark on Nan’s mission, or to find new accommodations, or just to get some distance from me.

Shaking off the last vestiges of sleep slowly, I barely made it to sitting before Ariel returned, leaving me with little other choice but to get up and get ready for another day, one I hoped would be filled with more answers than questions for once.

In the hallway, Ariel waited for me to get dressed so we could go downstairs, glancing up as I stepped through the door, but she paid no attention to my efforts, saying nothing about my dress or my hair, which I had worked so hard to lay just right.

“Are you ready?” was all she said, and, with a jilted nod, I followed her down to breakfast, the difficult lesson that everything from the night before had been illusory sinking fully in by the time we made it to the kitchen.

“I know you said we’re welcome here,” Ariel stated as Buddy delivered cereal and fruit to the table with a jug of fresh milk. “But maybe it would be better for everyone if we went somewhere else. Do you know a place we could stay nearby?”

“If you want a place more… suited… to you ladies,” Buddy returned, “it won’t be all that nearby, but I can help you find something, if that’s what you want.”

“It’s not that we want to go,” I rushed to say when I thought he seemed hurt. “We just don’t want your other guests to be uncomfortable.”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” he smiled a slow smile. “My other guests will be just fine.”

Knowing Buddy meant it, I also knew he didn’t know everyone else’s minds, or that the lady in the hallway the night before didn’t seem all that fine.

“We don’t have to make trouble,” I told him.

“You plannin’ on makin’ some trouble?” Buddy asked, and I couldn’t help but smile at his teasing. “Now, if you’re not comfortable here, I am more than happy to help you find a more suitable accommodation. But if you’re happy here, don’t you worry about those other guests. There’s no reason we can’t all get along just fine.”

Realizing Ariel hadn’t said a word since she brought the subject up, I glanced to her, but, sipping her coffee, she seemed content to let me decide what happened next, and I realized I had decided before Buddy even started talking.

“I do want to stay,” I said.

“Then stay,” Buddy responded as two sharply-dressed men walked through the door of the dining room, stopping to stare at us sitting there at Buddy’s breakfast table like we belonged at it. “Morning, Gentlemen,” Buddy greeted. “How was your night?”

“Very good, thank you,” it took the one in suspenders a moment to reply.

“These are some of your fellow guests. Ariel and Elizabeth,” Buddy made a sweeping gesture toward us, all hesitance from the night before gone in his effort to make us feel welcome. “You don’t mind sharing a table with them this morning, do you?”

“No, of course not,” the man in the suspenders said, though I could see it was against his better judgment as he glanced to the other man. “Good morning, Ladies.”

“Good morning,” Ariel responded.

“Ladies,” Buddy went on, waving the men to the table. “This is Ronald and Marcus. You all just stay here and get to know each other. I’ll bring you out some coffee.”

And, as Buddy went off to collect the coffee for Ronald and Marcus, and they took the seats alongside us, that was that, just four adults perfectly aware of the law, choosing to ignore it and sit down to a meal together.

S
till early as we made it out of the boarding house and onto the street, the New Orleans’ temperatures were already bordering on brutal, beating down in hot rays that cut right through the fabric of my dress to pierce the skin beneath.

Under the protection of the wide-brimmed hat that had been Nan’s many years before and had the magic power of making me feel prettier than I normally did, I discovered it didn’t make me feel invincible or more fitted to my surroundings.

If I had once thought to use it, logic would have told me, if the address Nan gave us was close by, that meant the same neighborhood, and, if it was in the same neighborhood, that meant we were going to walk past the same types of people with whom we’d spent our evening and morning. After passing several sets and individuals, though, who looked to us with the same confusion I felt walking their streets, I managed to convince myself again that Ariel had it wrong.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” I asked her, trembling with the impending doom that came from being in a place I had no right to be.

“According to Buddy and the map,” Ariel replied, holding the folded paper out. “But if you prefer to try to find it...”

Shaking my head, I tightened my arms across my chest, trapping the heat more aggressively against my skin, as certain I would get us lost as I was Ariel was leading us in the wrong direction.

Though there were things about it that made sense - the way Nan had always seen past color, how she always had been a champion for those whose voices most often went unheard - they didn’t overshadow those things that didn’t. In the world we lived in, there was simply no way Nan could have spent time in this neighborhood as it stood, and since politics and people were slow to change, it was the neighborhood that must be different, I thought, which meant Nan’s friend who once lived there was unlikely to be found there anymore.

Theory unfolding in my mind, I didn’t see the ball coming at us until it bounced off the side of my shoe, and, glancing into the yard from which it came, I watched a young black girl pull to a stop.

Clearly afraid to come closer, the girl took a step back, like she was on the verge of dashing off and leaving her ball to its fate, as I bent down to pick it up, holding it out with what I hoped was a reassuring smile, in spite of my own discomfort.

Hesitating, the girl at last rushed forward to snatch the ball from my hand, giving a giant toothy smile, before her two short braids whipped around and she ran off behind a house. Remembering the grin on the boy’s face the day Nan stopped to tend to his wound, I at last considered the possibility the direction Ariel was taking me might be right after all.

“It should be the next street,” Ariel said, folding the map beneath her arm and tossing her head back with the same confidence that carried her everywhere, even in an unknown situation that wasn’t of her own choosing.

Pushing my shoulders back, I tried to match her level of courage. With each step, though, the anxiety of what could lie ahead pressed down on them, so it felt as if my head was tucked in like the box turtle Edward caught when we were little by the time we got to the right street.

“This way,” Ariel took steps in the proper direction without delay, and I trailed after her, ever the follower, until she came to a stop in front of a row of houses. “This is it,” she announced, and, turning to the house before us, it looked like nothing worth seeking or finding. A near-exact copy of those on either side of it, the house seemed darker somehow than either, and had signs of wear the others didn’t, like it hadn’t bothered with itself in some time and had no desire to be bothered by white strangers from another city.

“No one’s home,” I said, my eyes moving over the unobtrusive, uniform face of the row house, finding every spot of flaking paint, and eyeing the shutter dangling precariously across a slightly-cracked and taped front window.

“So it seems,” Ariel agreed, moving for the front walk anyway.

Hand reaching out on instinct, I wasn’t sure if it was my ability to bring her to a stop or the feel of Ariel’s arm inside the circle of my hand that brought me greater relief.

“I don’t know about this,” I uttered, knuckles going white where they seized her, and Ariel’s gaze was surprisingly sympathetic as her fingers slid inside mine to ease my grip.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked, and I knew she meant to ease my mind, but with everything from Nan’s request to the wooden box back at the boarding house to the neighborhood in which we stood utter mysteries to me, I had no basis to even guess what might happen. How was I to know what secrets, stories or threats might live behind a closed door in a colored neighborhood a thousand miles from the things with which I was familiar?