I don’t stay in the house any longer than I have to. I shower, change, and run the hell back on out, but I make a pit stop in the kitchen to see the state of the appliances, only to find what I’d apparently missed in yesterday’s quick tour: there are none!
I laugh because what the hell else am I going to do?
I call Karen and, apparently, catch her just as she’s about to head out for the day. How do I know that? Because she has an obvious attitude.
“What now, Mr. Delisle?” she sighs.
“I need appliances?” I tell her. “I don’t even have a refrigerator?”
“I don’t know anything about home renovations—”
“Neither do I.”
“But I would think you’d want to wait until you talk to a contractor before you buy any appliances.”
“That’s all well and good for you to say, but I need to eat, and unless you’re going to reimburse me for all my meals—”
“Yes,” she says, annoyed as hell. “That’s approved by your aunt’s fund to get you on your feet. You can give me your receipts, and I’ll order you a debit card for that account. Stop by sometime later this week to sign some paperwork and pick it up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, flabbergasted at how easy that was.
“If that’s all…?”
“Yep, that’s it.” I decide to call her just before her office closes from here on out. She might not be any nicer, but she certainly seems much less tightfisted with my aunt’s money.
Since I’m on the phone, I decide to call Pelican Construction while I pace back and forth to the driveway. The receptionist is much nicer than Karen, but with much less happy news. They’ll be happy to get someone out to see me, but it might take a few weeks. All I can do is sigh and say thanks.
When I hang up, I feel like someone’s watching me from the house. I run my hand over the center of my chest where I’d felt…something — something I don’t understand or even know how to describe — earlier today. Even just thinking about it makes the hairs on my arms stand up. Time to head on out.
I look back at the house, waiting to see something, anything through the windows that might explain the weird things I’m feeling, but there’s nothing. I shake my head and frown, but I don’t go back inside. I don’t want to. Not yet.
But I have no idea what to do with myself.
“Hey, neighbor,” Todd calls from his lawn.
“Are you stalking me?”
The man has the nerve to laugh. “Heading to the community meeting?”
No. “Uh…yeah, sure. Why not?”
“Well, come on. We can walk over together.”
I sigh and walk toward the curb because what the hell else do I have to do with myself? Nothing. Literally nothing.
“So,” Todd says when I join him on the sidewalk. “How are you settling in?”
I turn to look over my shoulder without thinking, and…does a house have eyes? Because I feel as if the house is staring me down now, not just maybe someone — or something — inside. “It’s creepy,” I tell Todd honestly. “Really fucking creepy.”
Todd laughs. He laughs too much.
“I know exactly what you mean.”
I turn to him with wide eyes. “You do?”
“Oh yeah, we all do,” he says, motioning toward the cul-de-sac. “Everyone has a story about strange noises in the night or rooms that are too cold—”
“Yes,” I say, shivering even just thinking about each time I felt as if I was walking through a sheet of ice one second and then into a normal room the next.
“Oh yeah, it’s like a rite of passage,” he says with a smile. “That’s what you get with all this…history.”
I squint at him in confusion, but what I’m feeling is revulsion because “all this history” was a plantation. The Randall Plantation. The fuck is wrong with these people?
“Here we are,” Todd says even though we’ve walked maybe half a block.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, this is a community meeting.”
“Do you mean a block meeting?”
“Yeah. That’s what I said.”
I want to tell him that he actually hadn’t said that, but I’m too tired to go toe-to-toe with someone else, so I just nod and smile and follow him up the front steps toward a house that looks like an after photo on one of those HGTV shows I used to watch. I stop at the bottom of the porch steps and turn to look at the other houses along the cul-de-sac, and my house at the head of it, looking big, old, and ugly as fuck.
“Damn,” I say. “It’s an eyesore.”
Todd claps his hand on my shoulder, and I turn to him with a deep ass scowl on my face.
“It’s an eyesore now,” he says, completely oblivious to the fact that I don’t like when strangers touch me, and he don’t know me like that. He keeps talking, though. “But in a few months, it’ll be one of the best houses on the block.”
I step to the side to get out from under his hand and look at my house again. “I don’t know about all that.”
“Hey, neighbors,” someone calls from the porch.
We turn, and there’s some other corny ass looking dude standing at the top of the steps, staring down at us and waving.
To be honest, I think about turning around and braving my probably haunted house in this moment. I think that would be much better than whatever the fuck is going on here with all this “Hey, neighbor” shit.
“Hey, Juan, this is Noel. He just moved into the Randall house.”
“Oh, wow,” this new dude says, jogging down the stairs with his arm outstretched to shake my hand. “We tried to buy that house.”
“You…did?” I ask, shaking his hand like a normal person even though he’s holding onto me and shaking way too hard like he has something to prove.
“Oh yeah. It’s the best house on the block.”
“It will be,” Todd corrects.
“And it has all that land around it. But the owner wouldn’t sell. How’d you manage that?” he asks, still squeezing and shaking my hand.
There’s a lump in my throat that I try to swallow, but it doesn’t budge since it’s nothing but emotion. “My aunt died,” I tell him.
“And she left you enough to convince the buyer?” Juan asks in shock.
I pull my hand away. “No. My aunt owned the house, and she left it to me.”
“Oh,” he says, hopefully realizing how fucked up he sounds right now. “I’m… My condolences.”
“We’re starting,” someone calls from the front door, thankfully breaking up this tense moment between us.
I follow them up the steps, trying to push memories of Sophie as far from the center of my mind as I can. I walk into the house, which is just as beautiful as the outside — even though the owner is a bitch. The living room is big and wide, but right off the bat, I notice that there’s not nearly as much original woodwork as my house. I puff out my chest for a second, hoping that Juan is pissed about that. The living room is full of people sitting on the couches and in dining room chairs scattered around. At the back of the room, across from a big picture window, is a small projector mirroring a slide onto the wall.
The Historic Randall Plantation Community
I stop dead in my tracks, staring at those words, and the bullshit from a few seconds ago suddenly doesn’t matter at all. I take the first empty seat and sit down, looking around for the presenter.
Eventually, a woman with dark skin and long dreadlocks piled on top of her head moves to stand next to the projector. She takes a look around and smiles when her eyes meet mine. I’m just about to jump out of my chair when some white woman moves into the room with a wine glass in her hand and a too-big smile on her face.
“Alright, everyone, let’s get started. The Fleur Belle community is so excited to welcome Nina Marshall into our midst. Nina is a PhD student of History at Tulane, originally from Alexandria. She’s here doing research on local history, and tonight,” she says, smiling at us like we’re at a standup comedy show or some shit, “she’s going to tell us about the history of our Fleur Belle community.”
There’s polite applause around the room.
“Thank you so much, Lauren,” Nina says with a polite, professional smile. “I really appreciate the invitation to speak here, and I commend you all for trying to educate yourselves about the community where you now reside.”
There’s a crisp bite of judgment to her words, and I decide that I like her already.
Nina takes a sip of water and clicks the little remote in her hand, and the slide on the wall changes to a picture of a cotton field. Someone in the room gasps, and I can tell by the slight frown on Nina’s mouth that her presentation will not get easier.
She shrugs and dives in.
The next hour is the most uncomfortable of my life — or at least since I took a class on genocide in college — but as the clock ticks, I respect the fuck out of Nina for not pulling her punches.
I only wish every word didn’t make me realize that aunt Sophie has somehow gotten me in way over my head.
April 1933
RUBY
“This is a bad idea,” Esther whispered to Ruby.
“I don’t have bad ideas,” Ruby said defensively, straightening her back. Her mama always said that a straight spine is the sign of a trustworthy man. Ruby presumed that extended to women. Even women like her. Even still, Ruby always thought her mama’s adage was actually just wishful thinking, but that lesson — like all her mama’s lessons — was practically written in her bones.
“Oh, Ruby, let’s not.” Esther grabbed Ruby’s arm and turned her away from the church in front of them to look at her.
Ruby looked up at Esther, her best friend. She took in Esther’s smooth brown skin and deep whiskey eyes and thought about just how beautiful she was, even when she didn’t try. Esther didn’t need any rouge or lipstick. Hell, some mornings, she didn’t even need to curl her hair, and as far as Ruby was concerned, she was still the prettiest woman in all of Alexandria.
Unfortunately, there hadn’t been enough people to tell Esther that. Instead, Esther’s daddy had told her mama that she was too dark to be his. Her mama had told her that she was too fat to ever get a man. And every man that had ever come sniffing ‘round her skirts had made her feel as if she should be grateful.
Ruby had tried, in her small ways, to make Esther see that all those people were wrong, but the bad always sunk deeper than the good. Another lesson Ruby had learned from her mama.
“Esther, darling,” Ruby said, placing her hand over Esther’s and trying to loosen her grip.
“Don’t ‘Esther, darling’ me,” she warned.
Ruby smiled up at her. “Fine. Esther, dear,” she said in the husky voice that always made Esther laugh, today included. “I know you’re scared, and I told you that I can do this on my own.”
“No.”
“You can go home.”
“And let you head on in there with those vicious Bible thumpers alone? Never.”
Ruby squeezed her hand. “I won’t think any less of you.”
“I’ll think less of me,” Esther said.
Ruby pulled Esther into a hug. “No one has been a better friend than you.”
“You have,” Esther said, “even if you are always pulling me into the muck.”
Ruby leaned back and smiled at her. “But isn’t it so fun?” she asked with a laugh.
Esther rolled her eyes as Ruby gave her a tiny peck on the cheek. “Come on. Let’s go worship, shall we?”
Esther frowned rather than reply, and that was just fine with Ruby. She was probably just as scared as Esther, but she didn’t want to show it. She grabbed Esther’s hand and turned back toward First Ebenezer Baptist Church, and they strutted up the packed dirt walkway toward the front doors with purpose.
Ruby did everything with purpose, but she might have pushed the doors open with just a bit too much energy. The small church with just enough pews for the even smaller congregation all turned to see which heathen had the nerve to show up to service late. She could feel Esther shrink behind her, so she stood up just a bit straighter. Ruby looked up the aisle to see Pastor Delisle standing behind the pulpit, his forehead beaded with sweat and shock distorting his face.
Triumph ran warm and fast through her veins.
The lesson her mama had never been able to teach her — but that Ruby had, unfortunately, had to learn on her own — was that sometimes you just had to walk through the world as if you owned it, pretending as if your next step was surer than your last and nothing anyone said or did could hurt you. It took a few years, but now Ruby knew that lesson almost as well as her mama’s.
She squeezed Esther’s hand once more before letting go and walking up the center aisle to the first pew with two seats. She stepped to the side so Esther could enter first, and then she slid in after her friend. The family at the other end of the pew — the Williamses — scooted away. Ruby turned to smile at them, holding Mrs. Williams’ gaze for a second, reminding her with that look that she would remember this slight the next time she snuck off to her house while her husband was away “fishing.”
She turned toward the pulpit again, communicating an entirely different message to Pastor Delisle.
He pestered her at her home. She would pester him in his.
NOEL
The room is quiet. Awkward quiet.
I’m very used to this kind of silence, unfortunately. Every house meeting I ever had with my former roommates ended like this. I mean…we didn’t tend to talk about how the land we’re living on used to be a cotton plantation owned by one of the richest and most brutal slaveowners in the region, but there are shades of awkward, and this is a similar shade, for sure.
Or maybe I just like that Juan and Todd and Lauren are looking at Nina, shellshocked.
Welcome to Alexandria, I think, and the voice sounds like Raeshawn’s in my head.
I take advantage of the quiet to jump up from my seat and head toward Nina. I doubt there are many people here who’ll be jumping at the bit to talk to her after that presentation, but just in case, I need to make sure that I introduce myself.
“Hi,” I say to Nina. “Thank you so much for that talk. I really appreciated it.”
Nina’s face relaxes, and she smiles at me. “Thank you for coming. Have I…” She squints at me. “I haven’t seen you before.”
“No, I just moved here like…yesterday.”
Her eyes go wide as saucers. “You bought the Randall House.” It’s not a question.
“How’d you…?”
“My cousin Tina works at City Hall. You met her today. She works at reception.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, thinking about her frown when I told her my name. “Did…she…?”
“Tell me you’re a Delisle? Oh, yeah,” she says. “But I would have known even if she hadn’t.”
“You would?”
She nods vigorously. “Oh, yeah. Tongues were wagging when the Delisles got that house, especially because none of them ever moved in once they did. I’ve been trying to figure out why,” she asks me with wide eyes.
“I have no idea,” I tell her honestly.
She deflates the tiniest bit. “I actually emailed Sophie Delisle…?” She says her name like a question.
I nod. “She was my aunt. My great-aunt, actually,” I clarify. “She just passed.”
Nina has the decency Juan lacked. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I nod and shrug and swallow that lump in my throat again. “Thank you.”
“So, you inherited the Randall House.”
“I did, but I don’t know anything about it.”
“Well, I just told you…a lot,” she says, gesturing toward the wall.
“Oh yeah, sorry, no offense. You really did, but there aren’t any Randalls in my family. Not that I know of, at least.”
“Oh, there definitely aren’t. I’ve had to do some genealogy of the Randall family, and there aren’t any Delisles there. A few more Black people than any of them likes to admit, though,” she mutters.
I smile and decide in that moment that Nina is my favorite person that I’ve met so far. Hands down. “So, what happened to the Randalls?”
“Oh, they’re still around. Poorer than they used to be. Racist as ever.”
“Poorer, because they lost the house?”
“Not just the house, but the land and some other property they had to sell off over the years.”
I nod. “Okay, that makes sense.”
“It does, except, losing the house was the beginning of the end for them.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She nods. “From what I can tell, they lost the house in the middle of the Great Depression right along with a bunch of other properties that had been leveraged to the hilt.”
“A shame,” I say with a smile.
“Truly,” she smiles back.
“This might sound strange, and you absolutely should turn me down if you need to,” I tell her, waving my hands between us, “but I wonder if you could figure out how my family got the house. Like…when? How? When I say I don’t know anything, I mean that I don’t know anything.”
She looks up at me with a small, devious smile on her face. She’s gonna say yes; I know that immediately. But she’s gonna string me along for a little bit, and I don’t mind that at all.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she says as that smile spreads across her mouth, and she leans toward me. “I’ll find what I can about the Delisles buying that property if you let me see inside.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “That’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not gonna ask for, like, money? A piece of land? A limb? A date?”
She laughs a deep husky laugh that I like. A lot. “I’m a researcher, not a pawn broker or mafioso,” she says. “And I don’t date. Too busy. But I had my heart set on researching the Randall Plantation all through college, and the minute I got into graduate school, the city started selling off the lots, and these gentrifiers snatched the properties up before I could even write my dissertation prospectus.
By the time I got back here, the houses looked all old-world Georgian and Victorian with a bayou twist on the outsides, and the insides—” She looks around us with disgust. “Nothing but recessed lighting and Italian tile. Heartbreaking. But the Randall House has barely been touched.”
“I know that’s right.”
“And it’s the oldest house on the block. The former plantation house, actually. I would kill to see it now. Maybe even take some pictures?”
“Done,” I say so fast I blurt the word out far too loudly.
“Amazing,” she says. “What day works for you? What time?”
I shrug. “To be honest, I don’t know anyone here, and I don’t have a life. Stop by whenever you want.”
“Oh my God,” she squeals. “Well, here’s my card, and that’s my cell phone number there. Call me if you change your mind, but I can stop by on Saturday if that’s all right with you?”
“Perfect. See you then. And thank you…again,” I say, gesturing toward the projector.
“No, thank you.”
I don’t stick around after that. I wave at Todd and scowl at Juan while Lauren looks at me with confusion, and then I head straight for the front door.
Outside, it’s finally cooled off a little bit. It’s still warm out but not so humid, and it feels nice. So nice that instead of heading toward home, I decide to walk. There’s not much out here besides houses, but from my driving around today, I know there’s a small seafood shack just a few blocks away, right where the “rehabilitated” parts of town meet the parts still in need of a face-lift. By the time I make it to the glorified hut, I’m covered in sweat, but the smell of seafood in the night’s air reminds me of home. Not California, per se, but home in Sophie’s kitchen. I order a cold drink and a po’ boy with some fries and sit at one of the empty wooden picnic tables to wait for my food.
The shack is right by a freeway entrance, and it’s so loud that for the first time since I got to Alexandria, there’s enough to distract me from all the things I don’t want to think about.
And for the first time in a long while, I don’t feel alone.
My hand moves unconsciously to my chest.