She whispered, “I love you. Can’t you tel ?”
I didn’t say anything at first. It was as though I was suddenly struck with my father’s stammer, but the words were jammed up in my head, not in my throat. Sometimes I wondered if Dana actual y liked me. She could be sarcastic and even a little mean. Could there be other people out there loving me who had just never mentioned it to me? I thought of Jamal, five hundred miles away in Hampton, Virginia. Did he love me as he studied for his exams, as he pledged his fraternity, as he chased doctors’ daughters, taking them out to dinner, asking them to meet his parents? With the exception of my kindergarten teacher, no one outside of my family had ever claimed to love me. It was jarring, dumbfounding, and very exciting.
“See?” she said. “You couldn’t even tel .” She shook her head like she couldn’t believe how blind I was. She twisted away at the sound of the approaching bus. “Don’t you feel like we’ve been friends a long time?”
“Yes,” I said, stil reeling with al this talk of love, spinning with the possibility of secretly having been adored al my life.
As she boarded the bus, she looked over her shoulder sadly. “You didn’t say it back.”
“Say what?” I said as the doors closed. She made her way to a window seat, but she didn’t look my way even though I stood on the corner waving like a child.
• • •
THERE WAS NO dissuading my father when he got his mind wrapped around a Big Idea. When he wanted to start Witherspoon Sedans, nobody thought it was a good plan except Raleigh. Miss Bunny, God bless the dead, wanted him to get a job driving for white people. Even my mama was iffy about the plan. She thought that maybe he should go into the army, use the GI Bil to go to col ege and veteran’s benefits to buy a house in Macon. He says he knew in his gut that he and Raleigh were meant to be their own bosses, and now he knew in his gut that my mother desperately wanted a formal party. “I know what I know, Buttercup.”
“But I’m with her al the time,” I said, as we left the stationery store. “When there is a big party coming up, she says, ‘That don’t make no kinda sense.’ And she gets migraines during debutante season.”
My father raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“It’s so,” I said.
“You ever hear of sour grapes?” Daddy said.
He opened the glove compartment and fished out a monogrammed handkerchief. “You’ve got something on your chin.”
I touched the cloth to my face. “She’s not jealous.”
“You got to learn how to listen sideways to what people are saying to get at what they real y mean.” He pul ed up in front of the shop. “Don’t fight me on this. We’l do something for you one day, too.”
“I’m not having sour grapes, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Daddy lowered his window with a smooth electric motion. “I’m serious. You’l get your party, too.” He touched the brim of his hat, and I felt myself smile as the car eased down the driveway.
THEY DECIDED TO spring the news on her on a Monday afternoon as she was sitting on the couch having a Fuzzy Navel and watching her stories.
I’d just come home from school when I heard my name in a stage whisper. I turned to find my dad and Raleigh hiding in the doorway of the guest room.
“She’s in there watching soaps,” Raleigh said. “She doesn’t suspect a thing.”
“I don’t know,” I said, which is the same thing I had been saying to them for the past three weeks. “At least clear the date with her,” I had begged as they plunked down deposits with the caterers, florists, and stationers.
“It’s a surprise, Chaurisse,” they said.
“She doesn’t like surprises.”
“She wouldn’t want a surprise party, but she won’t mind being surprised
The idea was that I was to walk into the family room carrying the roses Raleigh handed to me, wrapped in a paper cone. Daddy would put on music, Stevie Wonder singing “I Just Cal ed to Say I Love You.” No, they assured me, it wasn’t corny. “It’s s-s-sincere.” Daddy wanted me to walk on the beat “like a bridesmaid.” Once I had presented the flowers, Daddy would hand me the invitation, I would hand it to Mama, and Raleigh would snap a couple thousand photos.
“You g-g-got it?” Daddy asked me.
I rol ed my eyes. “I guess. But mark my words, she is not going to like this.”
Raleigh said, “She’s going to love it.”
Daddy said, “Can you change into a dress?”
I did change into a dress, a red and white polka-dot number I had bought with my own money at Lerner Shops. I even slipped on some patent-leather sling backs, but I didn’t bother with panty hose. You had to draw the line somewhere. I looked in the mirror and painted on some lipstick. I looked a little longer and rubbed some foundation on my cheeks to cover up the acne scars. I couldn’t get Dana out of my head, her knowing looks. I was uneasy with the way she talked to my mother. It was a little woman-to-woman, a little daughter-to-mother, a bit student-to- teacher, and maybe even a splash of vice versa. It was like my mother was a newspaper that everyone could read except for me.
Under my feet, the family room carpet crackled. Sil y as it seemed, I tried to walk in time with the music.
My mother was curled up on the couch in baggy clothes. She cal ed these outfits her “prison sweats” to distinguish them from the embel ished running suits she liked to wear to the mal . Mondays, in her book, were “grooming optional,” and on this day she had opted to tie her head up in a greasy satin scarf. At her right side,
