powdered, and dabbed on cologne. There were still a few soldiers and policemen prowling the campus but the aftermath of the riot was winding down.
JUANDA WAS WAITING out in front of her door on Grape Street. She had preened a bit too. She was wearing a white miniskirt and a tight-fitting multicolored striped blouse. She wore no hose or socks and only simple leatherlike sandals. She wore no jewelry and had nothing in her hair.
Juanda’s hair was not straightened, which was rare for Negro women in the ghettos of America at that time. Her hair was natural and only slightly trimmed. There was a wildness to it that was almost pubic.
She smiled for me when I hopped out to open her door.
“That’s another reason I like older men,” she said when we were both seated and on our way.
“What’s that?”
“They remember to be gentlemen even after you kissed ’em.”
“But you never kissed me,” I said.
“Not yet.”
I STARTED DRIVING and Juanda began to talk. She told me about her cousin Byford who had recently come to Los Angeles from Texas by hitchhiking. His mother, Juanda’s mother’s sister, had died suddenly and he was alone in the world.
Juanda’s mother, Ula, had been angry at Byford’s mother for over twenty years. It seems that when their mother died, Ula suspected her sister Elba of having taken their mother’s set of cameos that she’d received from a rich white lady she worked for.
That was why Ula left Galveston, because she couldn’t stand living in the same town as her thieving sister.
The sisters were estranged, so all that Byford, who was only thirteen, knew was that his Auntie Ula lived somewhere in L.A. He stuck out his thumb and made it all the way to southern California, getting rides with young white longhairs mainly.
He found his auntie by walking the streets of Watts asking anybody he met, did they know an Ula Rivers.
“Byford is pure country,” Juanda was saying. “I mean, he go barefoot everywhere and only drink from jelly jars. Sometimes he even go to the baffroom in the backyard if somebody in the toilet an’ he cain’t hold it . . .”
I could have listened to her for weeks without getting tired. She was from down home, Louisiana and Texas. She was more than twenty years my junior but we could have been twins raised in the same house, under the same sun.
I knew many young teens like her who attended Sojourner Truth. But they were children and I harbored the mistaken belief that I had left my rude roots behind. I owned apartment buildings and a dozen suits that cost over a hundred dollars each. But a tight dress on a strong country body along with the prattle that I hadn’t heard since childhood sent a thrill through my heart.
Juanda’s conversation was like home cooking was to me after five years’ soldiering in Africa and Europe. I didn’t stop eating for a week after I got home.
WE HEADED WEST toward Grand Street downtown. There we came to a small hotel called The Oxford. It had a fine restaurant on the first floor called Pepe’s. The maitre d’ was a chubby, golden-hued Iranian named Albert who liked me because I once proved that he was in San Diego when his wife’s mother’s house had been robbed. Albert had married a white woman whose parents hated him. He had never experienced racism of that nature before. Being Persian, he disliked many other peoples but never for something as inconsequential as skin color or an accent.
“Mr. Rawlins,” he said, giving me a broad grin.
The room was dim because, like most L.A. restaurants, Pepe’s had no windows. That’s because the sun in the southland was too strong and the heat generated by windows didn’t make for comfortable dining.
Most of the fifteen tables were set for two at lunchtime. The chairs had leather padded arms and seats.
The dining room was nearly full. All of the other diners were white.
Albert led us to a secluded corner table that had a banquette made for two. He didn’t say anything about Juanda’s faux leather or revealing attire. He would have seated us if we were wearing jeans and straw hats.
Once we were comfortable Albert asked, “Is there anything that the lady does not eat?”
“Juanda?” I said, passing the question on to her.
“I don’t like squash or fish,” she told me.
“Then we won’t bring you any,” Albert said.
He went away and Juanda hummed a long appreciative note.
“You come here a lot?” she asked.
“Not often,” I said. “I did Albert a favor once and he told me that I could always eat here free of charge.”
“Don’t the people own the restaurant get mad at that?”
“His brother owns the hotel.”
“Damn.”
“Juanda?”
“Yeah, Easy?” Even the way she said my name exhilarated me.
“Do you know a man named Piedmont?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s a man. Big long arms and bug eyes. He used to be a boxer but then he got hurt and by the time he was
