“She doesn’t like Augusta neither.”
“Not like that. Thinks she’s trash.”
Just like me, but she lets me in the house. “Why though?”
Eula shrugged. “Missus has her ways.”
“Does Joshua nick off a lot?”
“What now, child?”
“Does he go away without warning often?”
“He’s a restless one. He was that way as a child. He always comes back.”
I wanted to ask Eula if she was sure.
“How old are you, child?”
I hesitated.
“Truth,” Eula commanded.
“I’ll be seventeen soon but I told Joshua I were twenty. I didn’t want him to think I’m a baby. You won’t tell him?”
“Not my business.”
I thought everything here were her business.
Eula wouldn’t tell me about her own family. Though she asked about mine.
“No family,” I said, deciding that life was over. “I’m an orphan, me.”
Did I know about policy? she wanted to know. Numbers?
I shook my head.
“Tell me three numbers under ten.”
“Seven, two, eight.”
Eula wrote them down. “We’ll do a combination.”
She taught me how to make scones. She called them biscuits, which they weren’t never. Not even a little bit sweet. Tasty though, melted in my mouth. She said the secret was grease, which looked and smelled like lard.
The day Joshua left, Eula told me, “You’d best be moving on, child.”
“Not ready to go to bed.”
She shook her head.
“Not to bed—out of the house, out of Harlem. You’re white.”
I wanted to contradict her but Irish didn’t mean anything here.
“It’s not the place for you. You could get Joshua in a heap of trouble.”
“I would never.”
“Yes, you would. No matter what you meant to do.”
“You want me to nick off?”
“It would be best. Missus wants it. If you don’t go on your own she’ll make you.”
Why had Joshua left me?
“She doesn’t wanna see the bub?”
“What now?”
“The baby.”
“You’re with Joshua’s child? Well.” Eula kept kneading. “Well, well, well.”
I watched the muscles in her arms stand out. Kneading is hard work.
“Tell me three numbers.”
“Nine, one, four.”
She repeated them.
“Give the missus the news when Marguerite’s here.”
I avoided Mrs Irving till then.
Eula let me know when Joshua’s sister was coming.
I made sure I was in the hallway as Marguerite arrived. She’d been away in the South, lawyering. She had bags and a big coat but I flung meself at her before she’d undone a button.
“I’m Dulcie, Joshua’s missus.”
She hugged me hard. I wasn’t good at it. My ma wasn’t much for hugging.
“Pleased to meet ya—you. Joshua says you’re the best sister.”
He never.
“I’m his only sister.”
Mrs Irving glided down the stairs, icy cool like.
“Dulcie was about to leave us,” she said.
“You’re gunna be an aunt,” I burst out, touching the wee mound of my belly.
“I am? A baby! Well, you can’t be leaving then, can you? I’m going to be an auntie! How wonderful.”
“Very,” Mrs Irving said, but if her word were a knife, I’d’ve been bleeding.
Marguerite gave me clothes. She didn’t think Joshua had adequately provided for me. I looked that up after. Adequate. Provide.
“Joshua thinks I can be black like you.”
“He does, does he?”
She put makeup on me, to give my eyes and lips some sparkle, she said. It itched.
“What do you think?”
“People see what they want to see.”
“That’s what Joshua said. Tell me about Otis.”
Marguerite smiled. “He’s dandy. Jesse too.”
“But they never come here?”
“Mama’s in a snit because Jesse’s not like us. Mama’s colour struck.”
I’d no idea what that meant.
“Mama’s been worse since the Crash. Most of our friends lost everything. She’s scared.”
I was scared of losing all this too. Me and Mrs Irving were the same. She’d hate that.
But unlike her, I’d been poor, I’d been hungry. Didn’t want that ever again. Especially not for the baby.
“Is Jesse like me?”
Marguerite laughed. “Oh, Dulcie.”
I was getting used to it. My knowing nothing amused everyone, except Eula. “Well, is she?”
“Yes and no,” Marguerite said.
Marguerite took me out on the town, said she was teaching me to be a respectable Negro woman. Seventh Avenue was crowded with Harlemites promenading, clustered on corners, laughing and gossiping, young men commenting on all the women walking by—“Pay them no mind,” Marguerite instructed—and tourists gawking—“And them neither.”
It was dark already, the air crisp, and the neon lights glowing. There was music everywhere, dancing out open windows from gramophones, or emerging from guitar-playing men, sitting on stoops with upturned hats to collect coins.
A grim old man with a white beard, veins pulsing on his neck, stood on a wooden box and shouted about sin. “The end is—”
“—a long way off! Let’s party!” a young man shouted to the laughing, back-smacking approval of his friends.
“Should we darken my skin?” I asked.
Marguerite looked at me like Mrs Irving did. “No, we should not.”
“So how—”
“It’s about how we style your hair, how we dress you. How you walk, how you talk.”
I nodded but I couldn’t never move all elegant like Marguerite or talk like her neither.
“Look at the whites. Compare them to the Harlemites.”
I watched a white couple weaving their way past the people lined up to buy tickets to the movies. The man in a tall hat, the woman in a satin gown. They seemed bothered.
“Well?” Marguerite asked.
“The whites’ve got ants in their pants.”
Marguerite laughed. “They’re shaky in their own skins.”
“I don’t walk like that.”
“No, Dulcie, you walk like a farmer.”
She slipped her arm in mine. “Match my step. Speak like I speak—how I speak out on the town, not how I speak for Mama. You talk too much like that, we might as well give up.”
She blew a familiar kiss at two black men gliding by. “Those are Selma’s brothers. I’ve known them since they were babies.”
Selma was Marguerite’s closest friend. I hadn’t met her yet.
“Light steps, Dulcie. Walk lighter, walk taller.”
Lighter, taller, I told myself. I stumbled. Marguerite giggled.
“Girl,” she said. “Relax. Tread light. Don’t clomp. You don’t have no glide at all.”
She waved at another couple.
“You know just about everyone,” I exclaimed. “More than Joshua even.”
“I’m a lawyer. Everyone needs me.”
Marguerite smiled at young boys, running past, chasing a ball. “Their mama won’t be best pleased. Sway your hips, land softer on your feet.”
“Why
