those prominent colored features that Vaughn didn’t go for. No one was gonna mistake her for Lena Horne. Her eyes, though, they did it for him. Deep brown, liquid, and knowing. If there was something, one thing about her, it had to be her eyes.
Olga had a seat at the kitchen table. Alethea closed her eyes, put her hands together, and soundlessly moved her lips. The Vaughns were not themselves religious, but they sat quietly while Alethea said her grace. When she was done, they began to eat.
“How’s it going today, Alethea?” said Olga.
“I’m on my schedule. Gonna get to that laundry next.”
“You feeling okay?”
“Fine.”
“How’s your family?”
“They’re fine. Everyone’s fine.”
Same old conversation, thought Vaughn. Olga, influenced by her girlfriends in the neighborhood who sat around talking about segregation and civil rights when they weren’t talking about their nails or pushing around mah-jongg tiles. Olga, with her guilt about paying Alethea “only” ten dollars a day, when that was the fee Alethea herself had quoted from day one. Olga, still trying to make Alethea feel like she was one of the family; Alethea polite but not giving up anything of herself. And why should she? For Chrissakes, she was their maid. Get in, do your work, earn your money, and get back downtown to your people. Vaughn understood this, but Olga, who wasn’t out there, could not. Okay, so some folks were pushing for equality, and Vaughn had no problem with that. But nobody wanted to mix, not when you got down to it. People wanted to be around their own kind.
“Olga,” said Vaughn, “give me some potato chips, pickles, or somethin’, will ya, honey? This is… this sandwich would leave a bird hungry, right here.”
Anything to shut up Olga’s yap. But when she returned to the table with a jar of sweet pickles, she tried again.
“Alethea, isn’t it awful about that boy down in Mississippi?”
“Yes,” said Alethea, “it sure is.”
“They lynched that boy!”
“That’s what the newspapers say.” Alethea’s voice was void of emotion. She kept her eyes averted from Olga as she replied.
“The way they treat those Negroes down South,” said Olga, shaking her head. “When do you think this will stop?”
“I don’t know,” said Alethea.
“Do you think it will get better for your people soon?”
Alethea shrugged and said, “I just don’t know.”
When they were done, Olga cleared the table. Vaughn watched as she separated Alethea’s plate and glass from the others she had put in the sink. Later, Olga would wash Alethea’s things more thoroughly than she did the rest. Vaughn noticed that Alethea was watching Olga arrange the dishes.
Alethea turned back to the table and, for a moment, looked into Vaughn’s eyes.
FOUR
DOWN IN HIS room, Buzz Stewart turned on the fourteen-inch Philco that sat on his dresser and switched the dial to channel 5. The Saturday edition of
Milt Grant’s show was on Monday through Saturday on WTTG. On Saturday, Milt went up against the nationally telecast
Many of the famed Milt Grant’s Record Hops were held in the Silver Spring Armory, not too far from Stewart’s house. At these events, packed to the walls with kids from local high schools, Stewart saw acts like the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, and that wild boy, Little Richard. Stewart wasn’t much of a dancer. At the hops, he leaned his back against a wall, his sleeves rolled up to show off his arms, and watched the girls. But sometimes, especially when the colored acts got up there and cut loose, he wished he’d learned a few steps.
After the Grant show was done, Stewart took a shower. Then he returned to his bedroom, where his mother had placed a turkey sandwich and a bottle of RC Cola on his nightstand. He played some singles on his Cavalier phonograph while he ate and dressed. First was “Bip Bop Bip,” by Don Covay, on the local Colt 45 record label. Then a Flamingos tune, and “Annie Had a Baby,” by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and finally, as was his pre-Saturday night ritual, Link’s “Rumble” before he went out the door. Anything by the Raymen got him fired up.
He said good-bye to his mother, sitting at the table, smoking another cigarette. She told him to have fun and he said that he would. Out in the living room, his father, half lit now, looked him over. Stewart wore black Levi peg-legs, thick-soled loafers called “bombers,” and a bright orange button-down shirt under black leather. His hair was thick with Brylcreem and it rode high and stiff on his head.
“Where’d you get that shirt?” said Albert.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You look like a nigger.”
Buzz Stewart left the house.
DOWN IN THE basement of the Vaughns’ split-level, Alethea folded the family’s clothing, warm from the dryer, on an ironing board set under a naked bulb. She timed her day so that she could have this relatively light chore after lunch, when she tended to grow tired. All that food sitting in your stomach, especially that bland, tasteless food Olga Vaughn made, just made you want to lie down and close your eyes.
It was quiet down here, pleasant and cool. All the toys sitting around the basement, things Ricky didn’t use anymore and probably never had used much, gathering dust. In Alethea’s opinion, they had spoiled that boy, not an uncommon thing to do with an only child. When really all any child needed was love, food, shelter, and a good example of how grown men and women should conduct their lives.
Olga had become barren after the birth of Ricky, Alethea guessed, which was a shame for the boy. A child needed a sibling to play with and also to confide in when things got tough. Frank Vaughn was not the kind of man who could find a way to be both a father and a friend to his son. For Frank, it took too much effort and thought. He should have spent more time with Ricky, though, even if it was not in his nature, as the child had become something of a mama’s boy. Boys like that grew up to be lovers and layabouts, the kind of men who leaned on their women far too much. But Ricky was smart and kind. Most likely, despite what he hadn’t gotten in his home, he would find his way.
Alethea stopped for a moment to stretch her hurting back. The pain could have been a mind thing, thinking too much on the fact that she’d turned forty a couple of years ago. But she was getting out of bed slower most mornings, no question about it. Wasn’t her imagination or the date on her birth certificate giving her those pains. You worked this kind of labor six days a week all these years, what did you expect? She wasn’t going to think on it all that much, because none of that worrying ever did anyone any kind of good.
The Lord would show her the way.
She could see a doctor about her back, she supposed, but money was tight, like it had always been. Another ten, twelve dollars a week would help, and she felt certain she could get it, spread out among the six households she worked on her regular schedule. Wasn’t one of those families could argue that she didn’t deserve a two-dollar raise. But seventy-two would put her over the salary of her husband, who was making
