Drenched in Light (16 page)

“Oh, honey, I can take care of that.” Mom was right behind me now. “Joujou’s feeling better, and I have plenty of time.” In the corner, Joujou lifted her head and perked her ears.

“I’ve got it, Mom,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “It’s no problem. I really think the cleaner by Harrington will do a good job. All their work is done on-site, and they have a big sign out that says they specialize in vintage-clothing restoration and alterations. There are even old wedding dresses hanging in the window. If we take it to some drive-through place around here, they might send it out for cleaning, and who knows what could happen.” I headed for the guest bedroom, where Bett had left the dress after our impromptu modeling session.

Mom stood in the doorway as I scooped it off the bed. “I don’t get many occasions to go downtown anymore.” Frowning, she inspected the torn, yellowed lace around the hem. “I could save you having to go by the cleaner’s, and we could meet for lunch, maybe drive by Grandma Rice’s old house. That would be fun.”

I scooted past her, unable to imagine why we were playing tug-of-war with the dress. Did she really think I couldn’t handle taking laundry to the cleaner? “Mom, you don’t want to go by Grandma’s place. It’s depressing. The neighborhood has gone way downhill, and all those gorgeous old homes are being divided up into low-rent apartments.”

A flash of emotion crossed her face at the mention of Grandma Rice’s house. “I know. The Realtor’s been telling me that whenever this renter moves out, we’ll have to either section the house into upstairs and downstairs apartments, or sell it. No one in that neighborhood can afford to heat and air-condition that much space.” Pressing her lips together sorrowfully, she shook her head. “Grandma Rice would turn over in her grave.”

I patted her on the shoulder and moved into the hallway. “Try not to worry about it, all right?” Once again, she looked exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept at all last night. “I’ll ask around at Harrington. Maybe one of the teachers would be interested.” But I knew that no one who taught at Harrington would live in that neighborhood. Shamika at Jumpkids was right—“Harrington people” didn’t leave the chain-link enclosure of the school.

Mom brightened. “That would be nice.” Forcing a smile, she followed me into the hallway. “So how about lunch? I thought, after this weekend, maybe you could use a little companionship today.”

“Mom, I have several hundred little companions at Harrington. Loneliness is not a problem.”

Chewing her lip, she touched the lacy sleeve of the dress. “I just thought that after this weekend—” She cut off the sentence abruptly, trying to decide how much to say.

“What about this weekend?”

Her fingers nervously picked at a loose seed pearl, then tried to press it back into place. Joujou, sensing signs of stress, trotted across the room and whined at Mom’s feet until she picked her up. “Well, that little surprise at the mall. I know that must have been hard for you. I just thought that . . . I was afraid that . . . with all of the ongoing wedding plans, and then running into Jonathan and Carrie, and finding them registering for baby gifts . . .” Tipping her head to one side, she gave me a sympathetic look
.

Carrie. Her name is Carrie.
I’d forgotten that.
Jonathan and Carrie
. “Bett told you that we ran into them?” How could Bett do that? The idea of her and Mom talking about the scene with Jonathan and his wife was horrifying.

“Bett didn’t tell me about it.” Trapped between her desire to shelter me and the need to protect Bett, Mom fidgeted with Joujou’s collar, then finally said, “Jonathan called Saturday while you were still out with Bett.”

My mouth fell open in disbelief. “He
called
here?
Jonathan
called here?” Why would Jonathan call my mother? What was he thinking?

Mom must have seen me speeding toward an explosive meltdown, because she laid a hand on my arm. “He was worried about you.”

“I’ll bet.”

She set Joujou on the floor, out of harm’s way. “He was concerned. He thought you looked upset. He just wanted to make sure you were . . . OK after . . . after everything that’s happened. He still loves you, Julia. Just because you marry someone else, it doesn’t mean you lose those old feelings.”

A hot flush rushed over my body as Mom’s words crashed carelessly through the most fragile part of my psyche—the part that wondered if, by choosing dance instead of Jonathan, I had given up my chance at a happy, normal life. The kind of life Bethany was going to have with Jason.

He still loves you, Julia.
What if he really did? It was too late now. He was married to someone else. Having babies with someone else. Moving on with life, while I watched from this bizarre limbo of almost-but-not-quite adulthood.

I put on what I hoped was an impassive mask. “You told him I was fine, right?”

“I told him you’re trying.”

Blood boiled into my ears, and my heart did a furious flip against my chest. I felt betrayed in every possible way. Mom had spilled details to Jonathan, of all people. Whatever pride I’d managed to salvage at our surprise meeting was now thoroughly destroyed.

“Thank you
so
much,” I spat, my voice reverberating against the walls. Jumping up from her spot under a plant stand, Joujou disappeared down the hall. Nobody yelled like that in my mother’s house. Ever. In Mother’s house, anger was kept firmly corked beneath a surface that stayed smooth, like frosting on a cake.

Eyes wide, Mom drew back, laying a hand splay-fingered on her chest. “There is
no
need for
that
tone of voice. I was not trying to hurt your feelings. Jonathan was concerned about you. Certainly, I wasn’t going to lie to him.”

“I have to get to work,” I ground out, then swept from the room, grabbed my coat, purse, and briefcase from the stairway, and headed for the garage, leaving Mom dumbstruck in my wake. For the first time in a long time, I’d worked up the guts to take back my life.
My
life. Mine.

I collided with Dad in the doorway. Still in his sweat suit after his morning jog, he looked flushed and chipper. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

“Good morning.” Stuffing the dress in the car, I slammed the door. “How are you this . . .” Craning to see around me, he noticed Mom. His gaze ping-ponged back and forth between us for a moment, and finally, quite wisely, he sighed, said, “Guess I’d better go cool down,” then walked out the door.

Climbing into my car without another word to Mom, I headed for work, the normal sights and sounds of Overland Park lost in a blur of anger and frustration. I wished I could rewind all the way back to Saturday morning. This time, I would stay away from the mall’s gift registry, and the past and present wouldn’t have collided. Threading my way through the morning traffic, I replayed the scene over and over in my mind—tweaking it to make it less painful, less humiliating. In rerun, I came up with something clever to say. I flashed a dazzling smile, introduced myself to Jonathan’s wife, made friendly chitchat.

In the edited version, Jonathan didn’t regard me as if I were a wounded animal, a bird flopping around on the grass with a broken wing . . ..

I was so occupied with mentally recasting the encounter that I almost forgot to take the wedding dress to the cleaner. At the last minute, I bypassed the Harrington parking lot and continued down the block. Mr. Stafford, who was just getting out of his car by the gate, watched me with mild curiosity, rocking back on his heels with his hands in his pockets. Maybe he thought I’d finally reached the breaking point and decided to go AWOL. I just waved and pointed to indicate that I had somewhere to go, then proceeded to the cleaner’s parking lot. I pulled in just as the neon signs in the windows were coming on.

An elderly African-American woman unlocked the burglar bars on the door as I climbed out of the car, slipped on my coat, and reached in for the dress. Oblivious to my presence, the woman stood in the doorway, squinting toward a row of decaying two-story buildings that had once been a thriving business district. Some now sat empty, while others had been taken over by hole-in-the-wall restaurants offering
menudo
and homemade tamales, bars advertising
cerveza,
pawnshops, and various other businesses. The sidewalk was dotted with vendors’ carts selling tacos and breakfast burritos. Unlike the cleaners, the taco stands and restaurants were already open and doing a brisk morning business. Cars were zipping up to the curbs or the drive-through windows along narrow alleyways, picking up bags of breakfast burritos and other specialties.

Amid the chaos of traffic, children trudged off to Simmons-Haley Elementary School, lugging their backpacks. A few of them I recognized from the Jumpkids class, but they didn’t look like dancers today. They jostled along the crowded street, passing the bars and taco stands with unhurried steps that lacked the expectation of anything good around the corner.

“Looks like the taco business is brisk,” I commented when the woman opening the cleaner’s looked my way.

Scoffing, she cut a narrow-eyed glare down the street, “Oh, honey, they ain’t there for tacos.” Turning sideways, she ushered two children onto the stoop. I recognized them from Jumpkids: Shamika, who told me Harrington kids didn’t leave the school compound, except to buy drugs, and Justin, who crossed the cafeteria by jumping from chair to chair.

Shamika gave me a quick double take. “She a Jumpkids lady. She a dancer.” Studying me and the wedding dress with curiosity, she added, “What’re you doin’ here? You gettin’ married?”

Justin bounded forward and wrapped his arms around my waist in a hug that pushed a chuckle from my compressed lungs. “No, but my sister is. I saw that the cleaner here does vintage-clothing restorations.” My hands were trapped under Justin and the dress, so I just stood there while he bear-wrestled me.

Grabbing his arm, the woman pulled him off. “OK, that’s enough,” she said, standing him on his feet. “Justin, you gonna be the death of Granmae. This poor woman didn’t come here to be wallowed on by no seven-year-old little boy.”

“Actually, I needed a hug this morning,” I interjected, and both Justin and his grandmother smiled at me.

“Oh, Lordy, don’t tell him that,” she said. “This the huggin’est boy that ever lived.” Twisting him around like a tin soldier, she pointed him down the street. “Now, you two get on off to school. Don’t give Granmae no trouble today.” Pausing, she checked them over, lovingly zipping Justin’s jacket and straightening Shamika’s braids before gazing sternly into their eyes. “Don’t look right nor left. Don’t talk to none of them people on the street. Stay together.” She pretended to pluck something out of the air and drop it on Shamika’s coat; then she repeated the process with Justin. “There. I put a little angel on each of your shoulders. You keep good care a’ them all day. Stay on the straight path. Angels don’t like no strayin’ off the path now, y’hear?”

Shamika nodded with a veiled look of understanding. “Yes, ma’am.”

“The sta-waight path,” Justin echoed, his face surprisingly somber. “Did I det a boy angewl today?”

Studying his shoulder, his grandmother considered the question. “Nope. This is a shiny little white one with long yella hair. She don’t know the neighborhood, so you take special care a’ her, you hear? Now, git on off.” With slaps on their rear ends, she sent them both bolting down the street like racehorses out of a starting gate. She watched until they disappeared behind a sidewalk taco cart, then turned to me. “Now, let’s see what we can do about that dress.”

“Sure,” I said, but I was still thinking about Shamika and Justin, dashing off down the busy street with angels on their shoulders.
“Stay on the straight path. Don’t look right nor left. She don’t know the neighborhood. Honey, they ain’t here for the tacos. . . .”

I was beginning to get an inkling of what it all meant. On the street, cars came and went. Old cars, new cars, cars way too fancy for the neighborhood. A few cars I was fairly sure I recognized from the Harrington parking lot. No wonder Shamika knew that Harrington students left the campus to “score some bolt”. She passed right by it every day on her way to school.

“I think we can fix this.” Shamika’s grandmother was examining the dress.

“It’s pretty much a mess,” I muttered, still studying the street, trying to decide which cars I recognized, straining to peer through windshields and spot Harrington parking decals. My chest slowly tensed into a painful knot.

“Oh, honey, we do magic here,” the woman said. “We been fixin’ wedding dresses for over sixty years. My daddy opened this shop. He learnt all his cleanin’ secrets on a ship in the navy.” She chuckled in her throat. “Mighty odd for a black man to know how to wash things white as snow, but he did. Folks send us weddin’ dresses from all over. Always have, and . . .” Pausing, she followed my line of vision, then slipped an arm around my shoulders, whispering, “Don’ look too long,” as she guided me in the door.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim store interior, I tried to concentrate on the dress and Bett’s wedding, but my mind was still outside. Could it really be that Harrington kids—kids I saw every day at school, kids from good families, kids with talent, potential, all the advantages—drove by seedy taco stands to pick up breakfast tacos and God knew what? Was it possible?

“Here, hand that dress over to Granmae.” Taking the gown from my arms, the laundress traversed the narrow, chair-lined waiting area to the end of an old oak counter. She paused as an elderly woman in faded sweats and a striped Nike jacket hobbled in the side door, pushing an old-fashioned two-wheeled shopping cart with buckets of long-stemmed roses. Brushing flyaway strands of gray hair from her face, the visitor surveyed the room through blue eyes.

“You here already this mornin’?” Granmae asked, acknowledging the newcomer with a quick nod, then sweeping around the end of the counter.

“My feet were tired.” The woman hobbled across the lobby, bent over her cart like one of Tolkien’s hobbits. “Time for a rest.”