Tender at the Bone (15 page)

“All there,” I said.

Nikili gave me a knowing look when we got to the beach, but I think he was the only one who had noticed our absence. Monique had simply marched our boys off with her own and not one of them had the nerve to question her. “We can eat the tart ourselves!” I rejoiced.

“Certainly not,” said Danielle, shocked. “It would be stealing. Marie gave it to me for the director.”

“But he will want to know why,” I said. “You’re just asking for trouble.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Danielle, struggling with her conscience.

“Monique could have been fired for covering for us,” I urged. “You owe it to her.”

Danielle was wavering.

“Marie gave the tart to you, not to him,” I urged.

Her face closed up. “But she would not have done so if I hadn’t told her I was afraid of being fired,” she said primly.

“You are truly French,” I sighed. And let it drop.

All that evening Danielle pondered the morality of the tart. She was loath to let simple self-interest dictate her decision, but I had complicated the issue by bringing up a competing claim. Each time she decided in favor of Monique she questioned her own motives. The director could not be denied his tart simply because she was afraid to tell him where we had been.

“The tart’s going to be too old to eat by the time you make up your mind,” I teased, but I secretly admired her struggle.

“Leave me be,” she said, going off by herself.

When she returned there was a determined look on her face, and she went up to Monique and solemnly presented her with the tart. “This is for you,” she said. “You took a risk for us and I am very grateful.”

“Thanks,” said Monique. That night when she and Georges went into the woods they were carrying the tart.

“Why are you letting her eat the evidence?” I asked Danielle as we got ready for bed.

“I think it is what Marie would have wanted,” she said sleepily. She turned out the light. “Next week, when she shows me the recipe, I will bake a tart for the director. It is the correct thing to do.”

SERAFINA

Most freshmen arrived in Ann Arbor with their parents in tow. I watched enviously as they moved desks into the dorm and went off for farewell celebrations. My mother was still in Europe, trying to finish her book, and it never occurred to Dad that I might like company on my first trip to college. Anyway, had he asked I’m sure I would have told him to stay home.

But when I climbed down from the bus in front of the Student Union I realized that there were 30,000 students at the University of Michigan and I did not know one. I picked up my bag and headed in the direction of Couzens Hall, praying that my roommate would be there.

She was not; all I found was a note saying she had gone home to Detroit and to take whichever bed I wanted. I snooped through the things she had left behind, but they weren’t very telling: I now knew she was small and thin and that her name was Serafina.

When Serafina finally showed up two days later I realized it was probably a good thing my mother hadn’t brought me to college
after all. Mom wasn’t thrilled about the University of Michigan, and I was going to have to prepare her for my roommate. Serafina was beautiful, with big liquid brown eyes framed by straight, short, shiny black hair. She was smart and funny with an offbeat sense of humor. And her skin, even in winter, was the color of a perfect tan.

But Mom never gave me a chance to prepare her. One day in early October I walked in from English 101 and Serafina said, “Your mother just called. She’s flying straight from Paris and she’ll be here tomorrow. She said she wanted to meet my parents.”

“Uh-oh,” I said. Serafina’s parents were the most generous people I had ever met. They had been in America a long time but they still spoke with a Caribbean lilt, caressing every word before releasing it. When they talked of Guyana it was as if they had just come to Detroit for a visit and would be returning any time. I tried to imagine my mother in their modest apartment but I couldn’t picture her there, surrounded by the smell of curry and coconuts.

But Mom didn’t ask to go to their apartment. She came barging into the dormitory with a big smile that fell apart when she saw Serafina. She struggled for control, gathered her face together, and held out her hand. “Serafina?” she said hesitantly.

Later she apologized to me. “I just can’t help it. I guess I’m a prejudiced person. It never occurred to me that your roommate would be Negro.”

“Oh, she’s not,” I said fervently, parroting what Serafina herself had told me. “Her family is from Guyana. They are of mixed French and Indian blood. They are not Negro.” And to prove it I gave her some of the coconut bread that Serafina’s mother had sent.

“That’s a relief,” said Mom, helping herself to a piece.

COCONUT BREAD

1 cup warm water

½ cup sugar

2 packages active dry yeast

4 cups white flour, plus extra for kneading

½ pound butter

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ medium-sized fresh coconut

Put water in a large bowl. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Add yeast, stir, and let sit a few minutes until it foams
.

Add 1½ cups of the flour and mix until smooth
.

In another bowl, cream butter, eggs, salt, and vanilla until very well mixed
.

Remove coconut from shell, chop, and put in blender. Grate finely and add to butter mixture
.

Add coconut-butter mixture to flour and mix until it forms a smooth dough. Add remaining flour, a little at a time. Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead until it forms a smooth, elastic ball, about 10 minutes
.

Put dough into a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled
.

Punch down, shape into a freeform loaf, and set on an ungreased baking sheet. Cover with a towel and let rise ½ hour more. Preheat oven to 350°
.

Bake for 50 minutes to an hour. Let cool on a rack
.

“I knew right away you were a rich kid,” Serafina told me later. We were sitting in our room late at night, sharing the pizza we had ordered. I was worrying about the calories, but eating it anyway; besides, Serafina, who had a perfect figure with full breasts, a flat stomach, and tiny waist, was eating most of it.

“I’m not rich,” I said, already regretting the pizza; I had burned the roof of my mouth and I kept touching the spot with my tongue.

“You must be,” she said. “I’ve never seen anybody who had such bad manners in restaurants.”

“Hunh?” I said, genuinely puzzled. “Bad manners means I’m rich?”

“No,” she said. “Bad manners in restaurants means you’re rich. Sitting there with your elbows on the table! You act as if going out to eat was something you did every day of your life. I never take my hands out of my lap.”

Serafina, I was to discover, paid attention to things that other people missed. Her parents had sacrificed to send her to Catholic school and they were delighted when she got a full scholarship for college. Serafina took a more jaundiced view: she was insulted that the Opportunity Award included a summer session to acclimate her to university life. “Just because we’re poor,” she fumed, “they think they have to teach us how to behave.” She took another bite of pizza.

I pointed out that arriving early did have a few advantages; by the time I got to Ann Arbor she already had a boyfriend. Rob was small and cute and followed her worshipfully around, eager to drive her to classes, take her to dinner, and show her off to his fraternity brothers.

Serafina looked down into the box. “I’m taking the last piece, okay?” she said.

“Be my guest,” I replied.

“Do you want to come to the dance next week at Rob’s fraternity?” she asked, licking her fingers with the grace of a cat. “I can get one of his fraternity brothers to take you.”

Of course I wanted to go. But when I went downstairs and found Rob dwarfed by a 250-pound quarterback named Chuck Mason I almost turned and fled. Chuck was stuffed into a black suit and carried a small corsage box in his giant paw. He, I could tell, was not much impressed with me either. We both swallowed bravely and held out our hands.

Chuck, who was from Marietta, Georgia, was disappointed to discover that I had given up alcohol. He devoted most of the evening to tales of his drinking feats back home. We danced a little, never touching. I was bored. Then Serafina came glowing up to us, holding something proudly in her hand.

“Look,” she said. It was Rob’s fraternity pin. “Rob has asked me to wear it.”

“That’s great!” I said, slightly jealous. For a moment I wondered what she had that I didn’t. Then I noticed that Chuck had stiffened perceptibly. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He pulled me aside.

“When a man gives a woman his pin,” he said pompously, “she becomes part of the fraternity.”

“Yes?” I said politely.

“She can’t,” he said flatly.

“Why not?” I asked. “Other guys in your fraternity have gotten pinned, haven’t they?”

He nodded. “But they’re not like her.”

I still didn’t get it.

He looked across the room, considering. He looked back at me. He looked annoyed. “They’re not Negro,” he said, his Georgia accent very pronounced so the word came out “nigrah.”

“I see,” I said brightly, “that’s no problem. Serafina’s not either.”

Much later it made me angry, but at the time I didn’t think too much about it. I was too busy thinking about Serafina’s sex problem. Now that they were pinned, Rob considered that he had certain rights.
“Everybody
does it when they’re pinned,” he reportedly moaned, night after night.

“Not me,” said Serafina, eyes flashing. I didn’t say anything. I had sort of thought the pin/sex connection was obvious, but Serafina was the kind of Catholic who ate fish on Friday. She had her soul to consider.