FAYARD’S MONEY WEIGHS DOWN MY trunk like a dead body. I imagine police at every turn just waiting to search my luggage and unveil my deception. Desperation, that’s what I’m blaming this on. Daddy and his lies made me do it. I tell myself that, but is it true? Did Daddy turn me into this, or is this what I’ve always been?
“Smile, for God’s sake. Nobody likes a sullen woman. Just a small detour and…” Daddy stops himself. The lie isn’t worth the effort. We both know what this is. I’ve already created the most believable excuse for the eggplant-colored bruise along my jawline. An accident. I was playing stickball with a few kids at the orphanage where I volunteer on the days I’m not providing cello lessons to the children of the Philadelphia colored elite.
“It doesn’t even hurt,” I tell the driver as he loads our bags into the car. Mr. John squints hard, eyes flickering to Daddy, before he decides to go on with his polite introduction to his hometown.
The train station gets smaller in the rearview mirror, but I can still see Fayard’s face when I close my eyes.
“James Shepard is a great man. After he and Mr. Fitzgerald started that Mechanics and Farmers Bank—we call it the M&F Bank—colored folks in town really had something to call they own. I was right grateful for them, too. My brother’s got a farm ’bout twenty miles outside of Durham. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Shepard’s bank, we wouldn’t have got the mule we needed to keep the family name right. My family ain’t too big, you know. I can’t work like my brother on account of my arm.…”
He yawns on, but it’s all just a blur. A lot about the great Mr. Shepard and how smart his nephew is, as if I care. My mind is racing, trying to figure my way out of this. I thought we’d be close to the train station, or at the very least someplace close to the city, but the hours stretch on as we get closer and closer to Hayti, “the best colored town this side of creation,” to hear Mr. John tell it. All I know is that it’s near part of Durham, far away from the train I need to get back to, to escape, to start fresh, to apologize. Maybe not to apologize just yet. Apologies hit better when you can make up for what you’ve done. Replace what you’ve stolen. Mend what you broke, and I need this money for tuition, for my ticket to Atlanta, to get a small start. I’m in no position to say sorry, not yet.
“Well! Here we are. Durham, North Carolina, but some folks call it Bull City. Down that way is the Bottoms. I wouldn’t recommend fine folks like yourself going down there. Folks with names stay up on Parrish Street near St. Joseph’s AME Church. Over there is Bankers Fire Insurance Company, and in that building you got the National Negro Finance Corporation. We got our own banks and volunteer firemen, so we ain’t got to worry about what happened in Tulsa in ’21 happening to us.”
I hold my breath and wait for Daddy to start in on what really caused those white folks in Tulsa to burn out and murder thirty-five full blocks of Negro businessmen, doctors, and schoolteachers a few years ago. Ten thousand people were left homeless, just like that. Everything they worked for, up in smoke, all ’cause some shoeshine boy had the audacity to trip and fall on a white girl in the elevator. Black folks say it was an accident. White folks say it was attempted rape. “What kind of girl works an elevator?” he’d start. It was all Daddy could talk about a few years ago, but he doesn’t take the bait. He lets Mr. John just prattle on. Finally, the car stops.
The house is large, much larger than our brownstone, with a wraparound porch and rosebushes bursting with flowers lining the walkway. African violets spill out of flower boxes on the second- floor windows, flanked by bright white shutters covered in the kind of ivy that’s left to wander as it destroys. A man—short, barrel-chested, and bespectacled—stands regally at the top step, clothed in the kind of righteousness that old families tailor for all their sons. It makes his creases sharper and the pigments in his ties brighter. It reminds everyone that humility is for the middle class.
Father bounds up the steps, nearly falling over himself to greet the patriarch of the Milton homestead, admiration smoothing the folds between his eyes. He can smell their money, and even I can’t miss the perfume of their position in the community. It’s the aroma you get after you’ve had generations removed from struggle, while Daddy’s still got the stench of Tennessee moonshine on him.
I smile and nod like a good girl all day and well into dinner with the entire Milton family, where Mrs. Edith Barbara Milton—and one must use all her names when addressing her—is attended by the housemaid. The girl is nameless, with downcast eyes and a blinding white apron that I marvel at as I watch Mrs. Edith Barbara Milton’s trembling hands and insistence on feeding herself. The cold soup is a disaster in slow motion. I’d no idea soup could be served cold until now.
Once she’s had her fill, her voice rings out, high and sharp as she addresses me. “Spelman? Fine school for girls, but it really is unseemly for a young woman to be separated from her family by so many miles. My son-in-law founded the North Carolina College for Negroes. It’s just become four-year. It’s important that we develop Negro teachers to educate the race into the future,” Mrs. Edith Barbara Milton says.
I want to reply that I’ve never seen myself as a teacher, but more as a performer. I want to ask if there is a music concentration, but I bite back the question because I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know how I can force-feed myself this half life. No, it’s better to go on as if this is a hell of my father’s design that I must escape. I need a good reason for what I’ve done, some excuse for what I’ve allowed myself to be. I let my selfishness turn to salt in my mouth, and I’m suddenly not hungry, my belly full of guilt and my own sharp-edged desires.
They’ve seated me across from Norman Shepard, the nephew, my father’s future for me. He’s got the flat forehead and light eyes of his uncle James, glasses, and an air of haughty satisfaction with the world and his place in it. Unfortunately, he’s also got his grandmother’s weaselly voice.
“We all agree. The question is to what extent. We should ask ourselves what we must sacrifice in our zeal to move forward at all costs. Our women are sent to work as teachers and secretaries and nurses while the work they are divinely ordained to do, as wives and mothers, is neglected. Can the race be uplifted if the family falls apart?” Norman says.
“You don’t talk very much, do you?” Norman says when the meal is over and we all thankfully begin retiring to our separate rooms. He’s been ignoring my usually very effective nonverbal cues. “You should speak up more around here. Your father led us to believe you were at least agreeable to conversation, if not a wit.”
I turn slowly on my heels and look down at him from my higher position on the stairs.
“And what else did my father say about me?” I ask, curious to know whether he fell on his habit of backhanded compliments or decided to go for half lies to sweeten his deal.
Norman blinks, obviously pleased I’ve decided to engage him in some sort of wordplay.
“Ah, well. He said you were well raised…”
I take a step down, closer to him.
“… considerably trained in the arts…”
I take another step, and he clears his throat.
“Did he say anything about my beauty?” I ask.
Norman chuckles under his breath as if I’ve made a joke. I stare at him, waiting for an answer to a question he was sure he didn’t need to reply to.
“Did he?” I press, a little bolder now. I won’t pass any paper-bag tests, my skin is far darker than your average lunch sack, and my hair isn’t straight as a ruler. If Norman is as shallow as he seems to be, then I’m sure that’s what he’s looking for—light, bright, with no naps in sight.
“Well, uh, he didn’t really say. Everyone applauds a girl’s bright complexion, yes, but there are other laudable qualities. He let us know up front that you were dark-skinned so there would be no surprises.”
“ ‘Us’? Surprises? When exactly did we have this discussion about my future?” I take another step down, so I’m now on the first step with him, close enough to smell the cigar smoke still clinging to his sweater vest. I look up at him through his lashes. I can tell he’s had little experience with girls, dark-skinned or otherwise. I’m much closer than good manners would allow, much closer than any good girl would dare, but I am not a good girl. I am an angry girl.
I hear the creak of the floorboards as Mr. Milton and my father approach from the den. Norman jumps down a step as if he’s been stung, but I hold my ground and my stare as the two approach.
“When, Norman?” I snarl.
“Oh, you two are still getting acquainted. That’s good to see,” Mr. Milton announces cheerily as he waves his pipe in the air, missing my tone entirely. Father isn’t nearly as excited to see Norman and me talking.
“Norman was just telling me about how long you and Daddy have been planning to get me down here,” I say, fighting the fury rising in my throat.
“Really? I’d say it’s been about six months since we first had a chat about it, eh, Joseph?”
My stomach drops, not just because it’s the first time in a long time I’ve heard anyone use Daddy’s first name, but because six months ago my mother was still alive, still making firm plans for my first year in college.
He always meant to defy her. He always meant to do this.
“Well, you really should have included me in the discussion,” I say, exaggerating my shock. “I don’t think your nephew and I suit at all. He seems to be able to overlook my dark skin, but I’m not able to overlook… him.”
The words feel good out of my mouth, but it’s Daddy whom I’ve misjudged. I thought there was no way he’d show who he really was in public. He’d never risk his reputation to drop the mask.
I was wrong.