Green. I am sure she cooked those grits, ful y intending to eat them for breakfast. Then he did something that set her off. After that, she probably picked up the pot, just to scare him a little bit. Next thing she knew and the boiling grits were al over his face. There was a name for that kind of thing. “Crime of passion.” It meant that it wasn’t your fault.
Chaurisse stood in front of the civic center looking anxiously toward Piedmont Road, bouncing on the bal s of her feet. She had quit crying but was sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She looked over her shoulder and said, “Hi.”
I said hi back, while taking in the details of the jacket. It was the very same garment, right down to the crystal buttons on the sleeves. This was my sister. As I understood from biology, we should have fifty percent of the same genes. I took her in, searching for something common between us.
James was al over her face, from her narrow lips to her mannish chin. I looked so much like my mother that it seemed that James had wil ed even his genetic material to leave no traces. I stared hard until I found something that proved that we were kin — stray flecks of pigmentation on the whites of her eyes. My own eyes showed the very same imperfection.
I must have lingered a little too long, because Chaurisse felt the need to explain herself. “I left my graphs at home. I’m so stupid.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just the science fair.”
Chaurisse shrugged back and said, “I worked hard on my project.”
Then a black Lincoln with tinted windows pul ed up to the curb. I fondled the golf pencil in my pocket as Chaurisse clasped her hands in front of her. The driver of the car blew the horn with a reassuring little toot. My pulse quickened, and I was warm inside my coat despite the winter weather.
My scalp tingled underneath my hair. I guess I knew on some level that it was only a matter of time before James discovered that my mother and I had not abided by the stern order to “stay away from my family.” But who would have thought it was to happen like this, utterly by accident? My heart flopped around in my chest, and I felt my blood racing through my body. In a way, I was glad that it was happening like this, that James and I could discover each other’s deception at the same time. I only wished that my mother had been there.
My intention was to stand brave and defiant. I wouldn’t say a word; I’d just stand beside my sister wearing an identical coat, letting spectacle do al the talking. Maybe his words would bal up in his windpipe and choke him to death. I was so furious that I didn’t know that I was scared, but my body knew, and when the door to the Lincoln opened, my frightened neck turned my face away.
I heard Chaurisse cal out, “Mama! Did you find it?”
I looked just in time to see my sister clap her hands together like a seal.
Chaurisse’s mother, Laverne, was nothing like my mother. She was round like her daughter and had that sort of let-go look that beauticians have on their days off. Her red-dyed hair was pul ed back and fastened with a plain rubber band. A T-shirt that had probably been black at one time, was tucked into what looked to be a pair of pretty satin pajama pants. She seemed relaxed, sil y even, as she waved the orange folder over her head.
She did what she did without thinking it over first.
“You mean this folder?” she said. “What’s it worth to you? I was going to take it to the flea market and sel it.”
“Mama,” Chaurisse said, “you are embarrassing me.” And then she sort of angled her head in my direction.
“Hel o,” Laverne said. “You got yourself a nice coat. You girls are matching.”
I nodded. Laverne wasn’t pretty or showy in the way that my mother was, but she seemed more motherly to me. Her hands looked like they were born to make sandwiches. Not that my own mother didn’t take care of me. She laid out my clothes each night until I was in the fifth grade but never looked quite at home doing it. There was always the feeling that she was doing me a favor. Laverne was the kind of mother you never had to say thank you to.
“My father gave me this coat,” I said.
“Mine, too,” Chaurisse said. She reached out and stroked my sleeve and her touch was charged.
Twisting away from my sister, I said, “He won it for me in a poker game.” I said this to Laverne and it sounded like a question.
With a little slackness in the jaw, Laverne said, “Come again?”
I didn’t say anything, because I knew that she’d heard me, and I could tel that what I said meant something to her. Her face creased and she looked a little less plump and satisfied. To my mind she always looked like a baby that had just been fed, ful of milk and content.
Laverne said to Chaurisse, “Okay, kiddo. Good luck. I got to run errands.”
Chaurisse said, “Okay, thank you,” and ran toward the building.
I stayed out front until Laverne got back into the Lincoln. I couldn’t see her face through the tinted glass, but I could imagine it, her looking at me and my coat. She knew that this moment was important; I had seen it in the set of her mouth as she got back in the car. I turned away, not wanting her to memorize my face just yet. This was just the beginning. Some things were inevitable. You’d have to be a fool to think otherwise.
4
GRAND GESTURE
MY MOTHER HAS PROPOSED marriage to two men in her life. The first was Clarence, the undertaker’s son. On the evening of the Sadie Hawkins dance in 1966, Clarence asked my mother if she would go to Paschal’s hotel with him. “If it’s good enough for Dr. King, it’s good enough for us.” He laughed when he said it, which Mother didn’t like so much. Although everyone knew that Dr. King, Andy Young, and that whole Morehouse crowd frequented Paschal’s restaurant for its legendary fried chicken, Clarence was talking about what went on upstairs in the narrow rooms behind the blackout curtains.
“It’s a joke, Gwen,” Clarence said.
