The Reading Lessons (12 page)

It was impractical, of course. This was a woman who, while she slept, soaked her diamond rings in a special bowl to keep them sparkling bright. She ordered stationary and gravy boats and pink tiles for the bathroom floor printed with her new monogram. She kept her husband hopping every night. It seemed unlikely that Hadley’s chance would ever come.

Then, one day, during their first official fight as a married couple, Dickie stomped on Lucinda’s monocle and told her the gosh damned thing looked ridiculous. “Why don’t you get yourself a pair of cheaters like everyone else, LuLu?” Dickie was the only one who got by with calling Lucinda “LuLu”. 

LuLu told Dickie she would rather die than go around in a pair of old-lady specs. “You’ll never catch me wearing eyeglasses like some decrepit, weak-eyed fool,” she vowed. “I cannot abide them for any reason, so you may as well save your breath.” This left only one solution. From that day on, Lucinda had her gardener read books out loud to her under the nippled ceiling in the turret-shaped tower she named
The Reading Room
. 

From the start, The Reading Room was a place to hide things that ought not to be seen. Lucinda had special bookcases made to fit the octagon walls, each shelf built doubly-thick so as to accommodate an inner layer of books and an outer. She said she needed the extra space. Only Hadley knew why Lucinda wanted to stash away certain books from view. The inner-shelf was for books such as
The Adventures of a Luckless Fellow
or
Mischievous Maid Faynie
. The outer was for nobler selections like
Kindred of the Dust
. But even
Maid Faynie
, for all her fooling around, was simply a decoy for the real thing.

It was Hadley who built the window seat with the secret compartment, a space capable of accommodating up to fifty volumes of
V.I.L.E
books at any given time. The lid was designed to open without any outward signs of seams or hinges. To the casual observer, the window seat was just a window seat. Atop the secret door, Lucinda arranged a pair of colorful cushions decorated with petit point scenes from
Aesop’s Fables
. The cushion on Lucinda’s side of the seat was the
The Rose and the Amaranth,
while Hadley habitually sat on
The Salt Merchant and His Ass
. 

“We’ve come a long way since those loose floorboards, haven’t we Hadley?” Lucinda asked as she deposited some new window seat books one day. 

Hadley was grateful to be reading again, but he didn’t think they’d come far at all. For the most part, he hadn’t managed to get too much out of their new arrangement outside of a lot of sleepless nights. 

###

The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe – it would return and repeat its operation – again – and again . . . 

                       
~Edgar Allen Poe 

While weeding the flowerbeds one day, Hadley got to talking to Quindora, with whom he’d recently become friendly. Quindora was to wash all the windows on the front of the house before Daddy Dick showed up for lunch. Daddy Dick, it would seem, was partial to salmon croquettes and spotless windows, for he requested both each day when he dropped in for a visit. Of course, if the windows happened to be up to snuff, he might point out a fouled rug or a dingy-looking drape instead. Lucinda claimed to relish his keen eye and worked hard to please him. From five in the morning until twelve noon, everything in the house got polished twice. 

###

Quindora had more on her mind than cleaning windows and rugs. She hoped to become a dressmaker someday. Hadley, when he wasn’t working, would let her pin his sleeves so she could get good at not sticking people. He’d let her measure him, too. In return, she would sing him songs. On the day she was washing the front windows, he requested she sing
There is a Balm in Gilead. 

Everything was going along quite nicely: the sun was shining, the weeds were few, and Quindora’s voice trembled with such sweet heartbreak, even the birds shut up and listened. Quindora had no less than fifty braids in her hair and, as she sang, one of them came loose. Hadley watched a calla-colored ribbon sail off over the roof.
If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul . . . 
She reached the sponge up to Lucinda’s window.
You can tell the love of Jesus and say, "He died for all.”
The same second He died for all, the window swung open and Quindora gasped. Hadley dropped his trimmers and flew across the lawn with his arms stretched out, prepared to make a catch.  Fortunately, he caught the falling girl in the nick of time.

“Lordie Lord,” Quindora said after she was safely in his arms. “I thought you were a goner for sure.” 

 “Me?” Hadley said in a shaky voice. His knees were shaking too. “You’re the one that fell.”

“Yes, but when I saw you standing under me, I thought I’d squish you dead.”

Someone cleared their throat just then and Hadley looked up. A bowlful of wilted rose petals and dirty water hit him in the face.

###

“It won’t do to have your servants making you look a fool,” Daddy Dick told his son later that same afternoon. Hadley was repairing the lock on the gun cabinet. Dickie was reading the funny paper. Daddy Dick was reading HOUSES FOR SALE IN MADISON COUNTY. 

“What are you talking about, Daddy?” Dickie said.

Daddy Dick snatched
Winnie Winkle
from Dickie’s hands and sent it sailing across the room. “Christ in a biscuit! Don’t you ever pay attention to what’s going on in your own goddamned house?”

 Hadley was accustomed to minding his own business and focused on the guns. His favorite of the day was a gold-plated Smith and Wesson. 

“What’s going on in my own goddamned house, Daddy?” 

“It’s that shit for brains gardener of yours, you dumb lug.”

Hadley bobbled a retainer nut. He was kneeling on the floor by the cabinet, a mere kick in the head away from Dickie’s shiny new two-tones. 

Daddy Dick lit a Lucky Strike. “He’s making a laughing stock of you, Richard.”

Hadley closed his eyes and held his breath and waited for Daddy Dick to tell Dickie that his gardener was in love with his wife. 

“The way I hear it,” Daddy Dick said, “your neighbors caught themselves quite a show this morning.”

“What sort of show?” Dickie said. 

Hadley opened his eyes.

“A white boy carrying on with a darkie—that sort of show.”

Dickie laughed. “My gardener
is
a darkie, Daddy.”

“Apparently the Hammermills can’t tell that from their doorstep. From far away, he looks as white as you or me.” 

“Well, he isn’t,” Dickie said, clacking his two-tones together an inch from Hadley’s ear.

“We’ll see about that. I’m gonna give him the A&P test.”

Dickie snapped his paper and went back to reading. 

About then, Tilly, the cook, came bustling in with a tray of sweet tea. 

“You there,” Daddy Dick said, and he pointed a finger at Hadley like a magic wand, transforming him from invisible to visible in an instant. “I need a grocery sack.” 

Hadley set aside his tools. Dickie had been so anxious to show his father the Mosin-Nagant he’d purchased the day before, he’d snapped the key off in the lock on the cabinet door. Lucinda’s husband broke enough stuff on a weekly basis that Hadley’s title should have been
Mister Fix-It
. Of course, he was often
Mister Fetch-It
, too. He went off to the kitchen to fetch a grocery sack with Tilly toddling behind.

“What’s he up to?” Hadley whispered when they were through the kitchen door.

Normally, Tilly was congenial enough so long as you let her be the boss. Hadley almost lost his balance when she grabbed his ears and pulled his nose flat against the birthmark on the left side of her face. “Who you been poking, Mister Gardener?”

“Ow!” Hadley said. He tried to jerk away, but she pinched his lobes good and tight.

There wasn’t a soul at Wisteria Walk that didn’t cower from Tilly’s birthmark. The story of its origin had been passed around the place a dozen times since day one. Sometimes people tried to expand on it or make it into something new, but Tilly had a knack for sticking her head into a room whenever the tale was being told. “Don’t fluff it up,” she would say. The un-fluffed version had it that Tilly’s daddy was hung from a pecan tree the day before she was born. Lest the deed should pass unforgotten, Baby Tilly popped from the womb with a leaf print stamped around her eye. It was her duty, Tilly said, to use her leaf-shaped birthmark to stare down anyone who was up to no good. “Don’t make me get you with my birf mark,” she would threaten. She used her mark on Hadley now. “I can’t help you, little man, if you don’t tell me who it is.”

Birthmark or no, Hadley didn’t want to tell Tilly who he really loved so he said, “Quindora.”

“The one that sings?”

“That’s right. I didn’t poke her, though.”

She threw his ears away so hard, Hadley stumbled back and knocked a pot of macaroni off the stove. “You don’t get it, do you? If you kiss a Negro girl, they gonna call you white every time. And if you kiss a white girl . . . shit. They’ll string up you from a tree like they strung up my poor daddy.” 

“Who does that leave then?” Hadley wanted to know. 

“Nobody.” She pressed her fingers against her pecan leaf and tapped it menacingly. “You just have to hold it in.”

“Hold it in?” 

“Ain’t no help for it, Mister Gardener. When a white folk looks at you, he sees a boy with skin too pale for Quindora and too nigger-colored to be white.” 

Hadley turned his hand over and looked at in the harsh electric light. He reckoned you could line up a thousand hands in a row and no two would look the same color. He wondered where white stopped and black started. How many drops of Negro blood did it take to move a fellow all the way over? 

Tilly turned his hand back over and slapped a grocery sack in it. “That’s just the way it goes for in-betweeners like you.” 

When Hadley returned to the parlor, Lucinda was there, perched on the arm of Daddy Dick’s chair. Daddy Dick told Hadley to stick out his arm. “Turn on some lights, Richard.”

Dickie clicked the switch. 

Hadley held his arm side-by-side with the grocery sack. “See that, dummy?” Daddy Dick said to his son. “This boy’s lighter than an A&P bag. In my book, that makes him too white to kiss niggers.” 

“Well, I’ll be dipped,” Dickie said, scratching his head. “I guess you’re whiter than I thought, Crump.” 

“This is a scandal in the making,” Daddy Dick said. “If you don’t do something about it, the neighbors will never have respect for you.”

“Aw, Daddy. I can’t tell Crump who he can and cannot spoon.”

“Can’t you?” Daddy Dick said. “One of them has to go. You can keep the nigger or you can keep the gardener, but you can’t keep them both. You don’t want more chromeys running around the place, do you?”

Dickie looked at his feet. “Well, shoot, having Quindora around is like having a tailor in the house.”

“Fine. You’ll keep the girl, then.”

“No,” Dickie said. “I want Crump. Lucinda’s fond of him, and he works like a mule. I just wish Quindora could stay, too . . . ”

“Well, she can’t,” Lucinda said, putting her two cents in for the first time since Daddy Dick compared Hadley to a paper sack. “Quit looking so guilty and be a man for once. Anyway, it’s Hadley’s fault, not yours. He should have kept his hands to himself.”

Dickie sank back down in his chair. “I’ll speak to her in the morning, I guess.”

“Do it now,” Lucinda said. 

###

“I’ve got an idea,” Mama said on Sunday after church. “Why don’t you invite a girl out to supper? You make enough money for it now.”

“Who would I invite?” Hadley wanted to know. “Tilly says I ain’t Negro enough for a Negro, and everyone knows what they do to men like me if they even look at a white girl.”

Quindora had put on a brave face when she left Wisteria Walk. “This frees me up to go after my real calling,” she said. Never the less, Hadley worried that an uppity place like
Betty’s Bewitching Glamour Gowns
wouldn’t give Quindora a job no matter how good she was at not sticking people. Hadley had been to
Betty’s
with Lucinda and everyone was blue-eyed and frilly there, even the dressmakers.

“It ain’t right,” Hadley said as he watched Quindora knapsack up her things in an old frayed shawl.

“Don’t worry, Crump. You jest be careful who you put your arms around out there in the world because peoples can be touchy.” She cuffed him under the chin. 

“Has something happened?” Mama asked him, snapping him back to the present. 

Hadley thought again about the goodbye kiss he’d planted on Quindora’s lips.

“What was that for?” Quindora said, touching her mouth in surprise.

A regular lightning bolt of rebellious glee crackled through the black and white parts of him. “If I’m gonna be accused of kissing you, it seems only fair that I get to see what it’s like.”

“You think next time I could maybe kiss you back?” she asked.

Hadley smiled and did it again. Quindora’s part was nice. Afterward, she patted him on the head. “I’ll see you in church, little Crump.”

Hadley liked thinking about that kiss, but he told his mama, “I don’t want to invite anyone to supper.” He was mad as the devil at Lucinda for what happened with Quindora, but the truth of the matter was, right or wrong, dumb or stupid, that afternoon in the Rose Bud Parlor was stuck in his head like a tumor. Every time Hadley looked at Lucinda’s right hand, he felt the annihilating thrill of those fingers all over again.

“For the love of Mary,” Mama said. “She’s a USDA certified married woman, Hadley.”

Hadley didn’t need reminding when it came to that. He wanted a girl of his own, especially at night when he heard Lucinda upstairs with Dickie. He wanted more kisses like the kiss he shared with Quindora, too. And he wanted his skin to be all black or all white and not somewhere in between. But those were just wishes. The sad fact was, Hadley felt permanently damaged. In time, he might learn how to think about other things besides the stroke of those fingers, but there was one thing he’d never get out of his system, and that was the way Lucinda’s monkey-flower eyes danced over the face of every servant child in Browning House and picked him out for reading lessons.