better.”
Lillimae folded her arms and glanced around the kitchen. “Now that I know where my mama works, maybe I’ll go back over there and slip her a note, tellin’ her to meet me somewhere where we can talk. Would you go with me? I don’t think I can do it otherwise. I am not as bold as you.”
I nodded. “I’m sure your mother would appreciate you taking that step.” I heard the toilet flush, so I glanced toward the doorway. Every time Daddy was out of my sight, I got nervous. It was like I couldn’t look at his face enough. Because my beloved stepfather had recently died, I had been afraid that Daddy would die before I could see him again. I blinked even harder and returned my attention to Lillimae.
“That day Mama left us, she took me aside and told me that I had to be stronger than Amos and Sondra because of the way I look.” A faraway look appeared on Lillimae’s face. “She was right.”
“You mean your color?”
“My lack of color would be more like it. I didn’t know what she meant, but it didn’t take me long to find out. Bein’ a Black girl in a white body ain’t no picnic. I’d give anything in this world to be as dark as you.”
“But don’t you have some advantages over the rest of us? When you go out alone, don’t white people treat you like one of their own?”
She nodded. “The ones that don’t know me do. But you don’t know how hard it is to be around Black folks and have them make jokes about me lookin’ white. You don’t know what it feels like when white folks on my job find out I’m Black. I can’t go around announcin’ to the world that I’m Black, but when they find out, it’s a whole different ball game. My first boyfriend’s mama was into that Black Panther stuff. The first time she got a look at me, she told me to my face that she wasn’t goin’ to be ‘eatin’ with the enemy’ or some shit like that.”
I pursed my lips and shrugged. “You can’t do anything about the way you look.”
“And don’t think I haven’t tried. I used to wear Afro wigs and dark makeup. When I got tired of that, I started wearin’ braids and all the things I saw the other Black girls wearin’. But that wasn’t me. I can’t be happy tryin’ to be somethin’ I’m not. Now my old man, Freddie Lee, ain’t too fond of white folks. But even before me, all his other girls was high yellow. That confused me. And it confused our boys when Freddie Lee put ’em in a all-white school tellin’ ’em he thought they’d do better goin’ to school with white kids. My babies would come home cryin’ every day because the white kids called them coons and niggers and spit on ’em.” At this point, Lillimae reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You are so fortunate, Annette. People know what you are when they look at you and they treat you as such. You don’t give out no surprises.”
“I’ve had my share of abuse because of the way I look, too,” I said thoughtfully.
“But if you could change the way you look, knowin’ what you know now, would you?”
I smiled. “I don’t think so. Every person I’ve ever known has experienced some pain about one thing or another.”
Lillimae nodded and shrugged. We remained silent for a moment, but the crickets and other night creatures sounded like they had a symphony going on outside. The small window above the kitchen sink was open by a few inches. A moth that couldn’t make up its mind repeatedly flew in and out. I heard an old car rattle past the house before it backfired. The loud bang made us both jump.
Lillimae shut the window and returned to her seat with a groan. She had braided her hair and pinned it up on her head. Traces of face cream made her look even whiter under the glow of the weak lightbulb in the kitchen.
“Annette, I know you missed your daddy when you was growin’ up, but it sounds like you still managed to enjoy life. Didn’t your mama ever have any men friends livin’ in the house with y’all before she married your stepdaddy?”
It took me a moment to respond. “Just one,” I said stiffly, my eyes on the floor.
“Well, I hope he took up the slack that Daddy left behind.” Lillimae sniffed. “Was that man in the Church?”
“Uh-huh.” I cleared my throat and rubbed both my eyes. “But he wasn’t the kind of man I wanted to replace Daddy.”
“Regardless, a man was there to keep y’all company. My mother-in-law always tellin’ me that a piece of a man is better than no man at all. She can’t wait for me to take that half-ass son of hers back so he can stop crampin’ her style. Every time I turn over in that big bed by myself, I know what she means. Bein’ alone ought to be a sin. If that man was willin’ to stay in the house with your mama, especially you bein’ by another man, that was a double blessin’. Wasn’t it?”
It took me a moment to respond. “Something like that,” I said vaguely. Yawning and stretching my arms, I rose and headed out of the kitchen.
I didn’t sleep much that night and when I did, Mr. Boatwright’s face dominated my dreams.
It was like he was still raping me.
CHAPTER 9
I was glad Daddy got up early the next morning to go fishing. It was a ritual that he had started before I was born. I was surprised that he didn’t want to spend as much time with me as possible. But in a way, I was glad to have the space I needed to sort out my feelings. As happy as I was to be in the same house with him, I was still uncomfortable.
Surprisingly, I felt particularly at ease alone with Lillimae. Her looking so much like me helped.
Lillimae and I ate a huge breakfast of grits and bacon before we retreated to the front porch glider. Still in our bathrobes, we sat fanning our faces with old magazines as we watched one noisy, beat-up old car after another crawl down the street.
The sun had already started its assault. The people in the houses on both sides of us had come out on their porches trying to cool off. The same old man I had seen watering his lawn when I’d arrived was watering that same lawn again.
I was glad that my half-sister was the type who liked to talk. She seemed to enjoy telling me about how proud she was of Daddy and how he had raised her and her two siblings alone.
“We didn’t give Daddy half the trouble a lot of kids give their folks. Oh, our baby sister Sondra was a little on the wild side durin’ her teen years. She got pregnant when she was fourteen, but she couldn’t stop dancin’ up in the clubs long enough to carry the baby to full term. She settled down after her miscarriage long enough to finish school and join the army. Our brother Amos, he fooled around with some of them drug dealers and gangs, but he came to his senses after somebody shot at him on the street one night. I was glad when he joined the army, too.”
“Do you miss not having a relationship with your mama’s family?” I asked.
A weak smile crossed Lillimae’s face. She sniffed and nodded.
“Somebody pointed out my mama’s mama to me one day when I was eleven. She was workin’ the cotton-candy stand at a carnival. I went up to her and introduced myself.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t have to say anything for me to know where I stood with her. She hawked a wad of spit as big as a walnut in my face. Me, her first granddaughter. I heard she treats the other two daughters my mama had with her white husband like queens.”
Just then, a noisy, dusty blue Chevy, dented in the front, a red door on the driver’s side, crawled around the corner and stopped in front of Lillimae’s house. A young white woman, glancing around nervously, kept the motor running as she rolled down her window.
Lillimae gasped. “That’s my uncle’s wife. That’s Roxanne. The one I told you about.” She clutched my arm. Her knee started shaking against mine as she rose from her seat, pulling me up with her. Lillimae started waving with both hands to the woman in the car.