BLANCHE CLEANS UP (excerpt)

BY BARBARA NEELY

Brookline

(Originally published in 1998)

Curiosity—disguised as helping Carrie hand around the canapés—carried Blanche into the library where the guests had gathered for drinks before lunch.

Blanche was generally delighted to come across a group of black people, but her stomach dropped when she saw that the They Brindle had referred to were what she called The Downtown Leadership—the black men who the big downtown white folks talked to when they needed blacks with positions and titles to support the latest cut in programs for the poor, or to amen some closet racist like Brindle. Do the Brindles of the world really think we're all stupid enough to believe that shit is sunshine because the idiot who says so is black?

She recognized Ralph Gordon, the new head of the Roxbury Outpatient Care Center. His face had been all over the papers a couple of months ago when the powers that be hired him after firing the woman who'd directed the health center for years. Her mistake had been complaining about cuts in her budget to the newspapers. Gordon was talking to James McGovern, the head of the Association of Afro Execs. He kept himself in the news by complaining about affirmative action and lying about black women taking jobs away from black men. Jonathan Carstairs, a lawyer who'd run for city councillor from Roxbury, was guzzling something from a highball glass. His campaign platform had included arresting welfare mothers if their kids got into trouble. Naturally, he'd lost the election. Blanche thought of him as a prime example of how racism made black people crazy. A tall, paunchy man Blanche thought was a high muckety-muck at one of the banks and a couple of men she didn't recognize were hovering around Felicia Brindle.

She watched Allister Brindle work the room, shaking hands and slapping backs. Was it phoniness that made him look like he was made of cardboard? His guests melted before him like butter under a hot knife. The talk was partly about sports and partly a sermon from Brindle against those homos, welfare mothers, and drug-dealing teenage gangsters who were ruining the Commonwealth and the country. Blanche kept waiting for one of the guests to take exception. None did.

Blanche wasn't at all surprised that nobody from what she considered the helpful groups in the community was there. It wasn't likely any of them would be hanging out with someone as far right as Allister Brindle. Like Allister had said, this was a paying gig. Every one of these suckers expected something in return for their sellout—a slot on some board of directors, some photos of them with the governor to hang in their offices and homes as a sign that they were somebody, or a reference to them in the newspaper as black leaders, which was important because they were leaders nobody followed.

Except for one of them.

Why was Maurice Samuelson hanging around Brindle? The Reverend Maurice Samuelson, founder of the Temple of the Divine Enlightenment. He certainly wasn't a leader without followers. She'd walked by Samuelson's temple a couple of times just before services began, and there'd been so many people, mostly women, trying to get in, she'd had to cross the street. He was also probably the only one of these boys who actually lived in Roxbury, where most blacks in Boston lived. There were signs all over Roxbury about the temple and its programs for elders and young people. He was the best-known outside of Boston, too. There'd been a story about Samuelson in Jet magazine. The article said his temple was a new kind of African-American religion where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holy books and beliefs were mixed together. She watched him as she offered the tray around the room.

He was a short man who tried to make himself look taller by walking with his shoulders up to his ears and wearing thick-heeled shoes, both of which Blanche thought made him look like an old-time gangster. He slicked his long hair down with pomade heavy enough to turn his kinks into waves that curled at the top of his collar in the back. His dark-blue suit fit as though he and Allister Brindle had the same tailor. His blue-and-cream-polka-dot bow tie and cream silk shirt were a perfect match. Of course, it wouldn't matter to her how he looked. She was suspicious of anyone who was pushing not one, not two, but three boy-led religions rolled into one.

And was Samuelson the only minister here? In this town, white politicians and black ministers seemed to go together like tears and tissues. At election time, the pols got religion and came looking for the blessings of black ministers as a way to get black votes without providing the kinds of services to black communities that they at least promised to East Boston and Charlestown and the other mostly white Boston neighborhoods.

"I wouldn't raise a dog in Roxbury," she heard someone say, but turned too late to see which man had spoken. She wished a pox on the speaker and all the listeners, too, since not one had disagreed.

Brindle clamped his hand on Maurice Samuelson's shoulder and steered him toward an empty corner. They looked like bad boys up to something nasty. Blanche worked her way close enough to hear what they were talking about.

Brindle set his glass on the mantle over the fireplace. "Now, about the election." He gave Samuelson's shoulder a little shake. "I really need your help in Roxbury, Maurice."

"Not to worry, not to worry," Samuelson assured him. "Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben know which side their bread is buttered on. And if they don't, it's my job to tell them."

Both men laughed.

Flames engulfed Blanche's brain. She'd never before heard a black person promise to keep the Darkies in line for Massa. A tremble went up her arms as she fought the urge to smash Samuelson over the head with the tray of hors d'oeuvres, an urge so strong she could see bits of smoked salmon in his hair. She told herself to breathe deeply, to stay calm, to simply ease away. But before she could stop herself, she turned abruptly and jabbed a sharp elbow into Samuelson's lower spine, knocking him off balance and splashing whatever he was drinking onto his shirt. Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima that, you butt-sucking maggot!

Samuelson staggered a step or two before he recovered his balance. He whipped out a handkerchief and dabbed at the stain.

"Oh, so sorry, excuse me." Blanche turned her head so that Samuelson, but not Brindle, could see that her apology was just words. She was pleased by the momentary flicker of uncertainty in Samuelson's eyes. Was he wondering if she'd bumped him on purpose? She certainly hoped so.

Samuelson hardly missed a beat. "No harm done, sister. No harm done." He reached out to pat her arm.

Blanche stepped back. If he touched her, she'd break his face in four places, and she let her eyes tell him so. He pulled his hand back.

"Everything all right?" Felicia Brindle made hostess sounds at Samuelson, but her eyes were on Blanche, who felt a sudden chill.

Two other men gushed up to Brindle, and he began telling them a joke about a Jew, a gay man, and an old black woman stuck in an elevator together as he led them toward the dining room. Blanche hurried off. Her blood was already sizzling. One more insult and she was likely to really go off in here.

She threw herself onto a kitchen chair, as startled by what she'd just done as Samuelson had been. What had possessed her? She'd been riled before. Worse than this. Once in a while she'd been messed with so badly, she'd had to let her finger slip into somebody's drink, put too much salt or hot pepper in the eggs rancheros, or add a couple tablespoons of cat food to the beef bourguignonne. But never anything like this.

Of course, she wasn't about to deny the wave of pleasure she'd felt when her elbow found Samuelson's spine. He'd deserved it, no doubt about it.

Still, what she'd done was unprofessional behavior of the worst kind—the kind that made you lose your job—and this job wasn't even hers to lose. So why had she acted like it was? Had she passed her sell-by date? Had she lost the looseness needed to roll with the kind of blows that came with this work? Or maybe she was just sick to death of nigger-minded dickbrains like Samuelson making pacts with the devil in the name of black folks.

"Spiritual leader, my foot!" She fiddled and fumed, moving pots from the sink to the dishwasher, emptying the kettle, wiping the counter, anything to keep moving, to help her fidget away the last of her outrage. At the same time, she was depressed by the knowledge that there was really nothing surprising about what Samuelson had done. She knew that all these years of being hated for no reason beyond color had convinced some black people that the racists must be right. Did Samuelson hate himself as much as he did the people he called Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben? Or did being a man of the cloth make him an honorary white in his own eyes?

She didn't go into the dining room, but she listened at the door to Brindle announcing his run for governor. He also thanked his guests, men he knew would help him "convince your people that old-style liberalism must give way to new-style pragmatism," which Blanche understood to mean that the few crumbs being passed down to poor black people would be taken back if Brindle were elected—for their own good, of course. Brindle spoke in a kind of imitation Martin Luther King singsong she'd once heard Ted Kennedy use while talking to a group of blacks on TV. She liked to think some black consultant with a wicked sense of humor had suggested this black-speak strategy. When Brindle was done, his guests all clapped. Blanche went back to the kitchen, wondering what their mothers and children would think of them.

Voices in the hall told her when the guests were leaving. Felicia lurched into the kitchen like someone struggling to remember how her legs worked. She stood in the doorway staring in Blanche's direction but looking at something only she could see.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" Blanche watched Felicia pull herself back from wherever she was.

"We'll be back for drinks and out for dinner," she said.

Blanche could have driven a car through the spaces between Felicia's words, as if she had to search for each one and figure out how to say it before she spoke. Blanche wondered what had happened to curl those sharp edges she'd sensed earlier. Something surely had. Felicia had the slack-faced look of someone who'd just had a serious shock. Blanche's curiosity pushed her to ask Felicia what was wrong, but her mother wit wouldn't have it. As far as she knew, she wasn't being paid extra for hand-holding.

She helped Carrie put the library back in order and load the dishwasher.

"So, no more nice Saxe what's-his-name until Saturday," Blanche teased Carrie.

Carrie sniffed and tossed her head. "Don't mean nothin' to me who comes and goes in this here house, not even that one who does the massage. She'll be stompin' in here tomorrow right on time. She don't miss a day. She—"

"Why you call her 'that one who does the massage,' like she ain't got a name?"

"'Cause God don't mean for women to do what she do."

"A lesbian, hunh?"

Had Carrie been a few shades lighter, Blanche was sure she'd have seen blood rush to the woman's face.

"It's against God. It says so in the Bible."

"But what's it got to do with you?"

"Ain't none of my business. But my pastor say it ain't natural. It's ungodly!" Carrie hissed.

"I don't get it," Blanche said. "You Christians say God made everything and everybody, which has gotta include lesbians. But then you say lesbians are ungodly. Seems to me that you, your pastor, or your God is very confused, honey."

Carrie looked at her as though Blanche had just grown horns. "I'm gonna put you in my prayers." She hurried away to the laundry room and closed the door firmly behind her. Blanche could hear her shrieking some hymn about being delivered from the heathen. It was so tuneless and off-key, Blanche suspected Carrie had made it up for her benefit.

Wanda came down the back stairs lugging the tools of her trade. She hauled the vacuum, bucket, mop, sprays, and sponges into the maintenance closet and took out her tote bag and sweaters.

"Well, darlin', it's been more than a pleasure. I'm lookin' forward to our next meetin', I am." And she was off.

Blanche sat down at the kitchen table, thinking about her best friend, Ardell, down in North Carolina, and what she'd say about the Samuelson thing. She also thought about going to the Y for a sit in the sauna, about calling home to check on the kids, but right now she didn't have the energy to move. Her eyelids lowered; her neck and shoulder muscles relaxed; her hands folded over her belly. She was a breath away from sleep.

Then she was wide awake. Why? She straightened up and looked around. Carrie was still in the laundry room, Wanda and the Brindles had gone, and there was no one else in the house. She walked through to the front hall. But there was someone else in the house. Someone who'd just been in the front hall, judging by the whiff of soap or deodorant she caught. She didn't even think about going upstairs. If there was somebody up there stealing the Brindles' shit, she wasn't about to put her life in the way. But she didn't need to go up. The person upstairs was just coming down.

"What are you doing here?" Blanche and Ray-Ray asked each other at the same time.

From this angle, Miz Inez's overgrown son looked even more like a chocolate-covered tank than usual. Blanche didn't care for overmuscled men; she always suspected those extra muscle bulges were substitutes for a pea brain or a pencil-stub penis and not enough sexual imagination to make up for it. Ray-Ray was an exception. When they'd first met, Blanche had found it hard to believe that anyone could be so in love with himself, so sure that whatever was good in life was his by right. Then she'd thought about it. Who needed more self-love and confidence than a black man in America? He was smart too and usually found a way to make her laugh or otherwise get on her good side. But there were limits.

"I'm where I'm supposed to be," she told him. "You ain't. What you doing in these people's upstairs?"

"Oh, that's right. This is the week Mama's away. I was upstairs stealing from your white folks, of course," he teased.

"You must mean your mama's white folks."

"Touché, Miz Blanche, touché." Ray-Ray bounced down the last of the stairs and gave her a peck on the cheek. As usual, he managed to move in ways that showed off his muscles.

"What were you doin' up there, Ray-Ray?"

"Getting my shirt." He held it out to her. "I left it here when I fixed the window on the third floor. See? My initials." Ray-Ray headed for the front door.

Blanche stepped in front of him. "How'd you get in here?"

"Through the front door, like everybody else." He gave her an amused look. "You're not pissed because I use the front door, are you? I always use the front. I used to play in this house. And ain't no white man gonna make me use the back door. Not ever."

Blanche wished him luck, but given the many shapes and forms the back door could take, she was pretty sure he'd already been through a couple of them, whether he knew it or not. Was it even possible to grow up a poor black man in America and avoid the back door?

"Honey, I don't care what door you use; I just wanna know how you got in here."

Ray-Ray held up a key. "From the usual place under the mat," he said. "I'll put it back on my way out."

"Well, I'll tell the Brindles you came to call."

Ray-Ray spun around. "You don't have to. They might not like the idea of you letting me in their upstairs when they're not home. Let's just pretend you never saw me." He gave her a full-faced grin.

"Ray-Ray, I don't want no mess from these people about the missing gold cuff links or—"

"Don't worry, Blanche," Ray-Ray told her. "You'll be glad I came, trust me." He opened the door and slipped out.

Oh shit. "Ray-Ray!"

He was gone.

Blanche hurried upstairs. She could feel he'd been in Allister's rooms, but didn't know if anything had been moved. She checked Felicia's rooms. She couldn't tell if Ray-Ray had been in there because the rooms reeked of that moist, bleachy smell of clean-body sweat, vaginal juices, and sperm. Saxe might tease the help with his sex appeal, but he was obviously delivering more than just promises to his client. She wondered if Allister knew, and why Felicia had sounded so down after having just had one of the world's greatest mood lighteners.

She went back to the kitchen and brought out the food she'd held back from the buffet for her and Carrie's lunch, and tapped on the laundry room door.

"Ungodliness can seep through wood, honey, so you might as well come on out here and help me eat this food."

Blanche didn't want to tell Carrie about Ray-Ray's unexpected visit, but she couldn't shut him out of her mind.

"Do you know Ray-Ray, Inez's son?" she asked Carrie when they'd settled at the table.

Carrie filled her plate. "Um-hum. Useta do odd jobs around here."

"How come he left?"

Carrie shook her head and forked some potato salad into her mouth.

"What happened?" Blanche asked her.

Carrie kept chewing. Her eyes strayed to the platter in the middle of the table.

"Try some of this ham. It's good." Blanche eased a large slice onto Carrie's plate.

"He useta be around here all the time, working and not working."

"You want that last piece of roast beef?" Blanche pushed the platter closer to Carrie. "What was he doing here if he wasn't working?" she asked as Carrie speared the meat.

"Come to visit Mr. Marc. Mr. Brindle useta take them both to ball games, stuff like that when they was boys."

The kind white folks thing, Blanche thought. Proving your decency through the help. But she was surprised Allister went in for it. Wanda said he came from old money. They didn't usually go in for touchy-feely with the help. It didn't fit with their deep belief that they deserved what they had and the poor deserved to be poor.

"It's a shame to waste the rest of this food," Blanche said. "I couldn't convince you to take it along home, could I?"

The first big smile Blanche had seen lit up Carrie's face as she bobbed her head up and down.

Blanche got some plastic bags and aluminum foil to wrap the food. "So, why did Ray-Ray stop working here?" she asked.

Carrie cut her roast beef into bite-sized pieces. "Seems like him and Mr. B had some kinda fallin' out."

Oh shit! Ray-Ray coulda been upstairs cutting up all of Allister's clothes. Blanche leaned forward. "What kind of falling out?"

Carrie shrugged. "Don't know. Happened on my day off. Inez just said they had a fallin' out and Ray-Ray wasn't working here no more."

"When was this?"

Carrie wiped her mouth. "Year or so, I guess." She folded her napkin and laid it beside her plate. "Well, better git back to work."

She left Blanche sitting at the kitchen table, glad it was the Brindles' and not her own food she'd used to pay for that paltry bit of information.

"I'll get it!" Carrie shouted almost before the front doorbell stopped ringing.

She was wearing her sparkly eyes when she came back a few minutes later.

"It was Mr. Saxe."

Men running in and of here like it's a cathouse, Blanche thought. "What'd he want?"

"He was looking for his pictures."

"What pictures?"

"Ones I put on Miss Felicia's dresser, I guess," Carrie said.

"What kind of pictures?"

Carrie shrugged. "One of them envelopes you git pictures in from the drugstore."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Found it on the floor in the hall. Outside Miss Felicia's room."

"So you figured they were hers?"

Carrie nodded. "Put 'em on her dresser."

"Did Saxe get them?"

"He went up to get them, but he said they weren't there no more. Miss Felicia musta moved 'em."

Or somebody else moved them, Blanche thought. Somebody who claimed to have been getting his shirt. But why?

"Pictures of what?"

"Don't know."

"You mean you didn't look at them?"

Carrie adjusted her hair net. "Weren't none of mine. I didn't have no business to look at . . ."

Blanche tried to imagine herself a person who could find an envelope full of pictures and not look at them. She thought Carrie would be better off if she was lying about looking in the envelope, but given what she'd seen of Carrie, Blanche was surprised she'd even picked it up from the floor. She shook her head in wonder and went to the library to set up for drinks.

Inez's note said Allister liked a frozen daiquiri in the afternoon and Felicia took an olive and an onion in her martini.

 

* * *

 

Allister looked tired but upbeat when he and Felicia got home. "It all went very well, don't you think?" he asked.

Felicia shrugged as if she couldn't care less.

Blanche gave her a closer look. Felicia's hair and clothes were clean and in order, but there was something smudged about her, as though she'd been flattened against a windowpane and smeared like a bug. Felicia ran her hands over her hair. It didn't help. It's them eyes she needs to do something about, Blanche thought.

"Where'd you disappear to?" Allister asked Felicia.

"What?"

"At the reception. I looked around and you were nowhere to be seen."

"You're running for office, Allister, not me. I don't have to be ever-present." Felicia's hand shook when she took her drink from the tray Blanche held. She looked up at Blanche and quickly away.

"A candidate's wife can be more important than his platform. You know that. You promised you would . . ."

Felicia rose with the martini glass still in her hand.

"Blanche, please send the shaker upstairs," she said, and walked out of the room and up the stairs as though Allister didn't exist.

Allister closed his eyes and laid his head against the back of his armchair and sighed a sigh that was almost a moan. Then he, too, rose and left the room.

Blanche was expecting Felicia to send for her and ask what had happened to Saxe's pictures. She was relieved when it didn't happen. Maybe she was wrong about those pictures. Maybe Ray-Ray had taken something of Allister's, as she'd first thought.

Allister was in the breakfast room when Blanche passed by on her way to the kitchen. She waited half a minute before she strolled past the breakfast room again. Allister was now in the sunroom leaning over the stand of African violets. She couldn't see his face, but she watched his hands as he slowly, gently removed browning leaves, moved pots from one spot to another, and brushed his fingers lightly against the blossoms. His body looked softer, more round, as if he'd been stiffening his spine and sucking in his gut until this moment when he thought he was alone. Like everybody else, Allister had more than one side, but she didn't think it mattered. Was a rattlesnake sunning itself all that much less dangerous than one on the hunt?

When Allister finally went upstairs to dress for dinner, Blanche waited again for shouts of "I've been robbed!" but all was quiet. Either Ray-Ray had pinched something of Allister's that wasn't obvious, or she'd been right the first time and it was Saxe's pictures he'd taken and Felicia just hadn't missed them yet.

 

* * *

 

The wind had died down by the time Blanche left work. The air was still on the cold side, but she could feel spring just waiting to burst out. She climbed the driveway and walked up Cottage Street—really a one-lane, one-way road.

This was the greenest part of the city she'd seen outside of Boston Common and the gardens downtown. It looked like country around here. Just like the Brindles' place, the few other houses along the road were all down in a kind of valley tucked away out of sight behind stone or wooden fences. Following Inez's directions, Blanche turned left at the top of the hill and followed a two-lane road until it turned into Perkins Street, where she saw the lake she'd noticed on the way in. The sign she passed said brookline, and she realized the Brindle house was about three blocks outside the city of Boston.

But she'd crossed the line and was back in Boston now. Another sign announced that the lake was called Jamaica Pond, which told her she must be in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston.

Her regular jobs took her into the South End, Back Bay, and Beacon Hill, but she'd never been here before or to other neighborhoods like East Boston, Charlestown, South Boston, or the North End. Somebody had told her that some of these places had once been separate towns, but that was a long time ago. From what she heard and read, the major use of these neighborhood names now seemed to be to keep people apart and suspicious of one another. And she knew there were Boston communities unfriendly to folks from outside, particularly black, brown, and yellow folks.

From where she now stood, she couldn't see the other side of the pond. Canada geese and ducks skimmed along its surface. People strolled, jogged, and pushed strollers on the path beside the pond. Blanche stretched out her arms to the greening trees and blue water. She missed all of this over in the part of Roxbury where she lived. There were some trees on its streets, but if there were any bodies of water in the neighborhood, besides public pools and mud puddles, she'd never heard about them.

She'd been in Boston nearly three years, but having to build up her clientele and take care of the kids and the house, along with winters that demanded she stay indoors as much as possible, had reduced her learn-about-Boston time down to about six months. Still, she hadn't even done six months worth of exploring. Maybe it was because she hadn't had much choice about moving here. It was not so much her idea as her only alternative: she'd needed to get out of Farleigh in a hurry, and Cousin Charlotte had been able and willing to help her out. Blanche would have left Boston by now if it weren't for Taifa and Malik. They'd been in three different school systems in as many years. It didn't feel right to ask them to move again.

She waited for the light to change at Jamaica Way and Perkins Street, where the traffic was moving at expressway speed. She looked down Jamaica Way with its huge houses on one side and the pond on the other. Nice. When the light changed, she hurried across and walked on toward Centre Street, where she'd get the bus. It was a longish walk. Miz Inez had offered her banged-up car, but Blanche had seen enough of Boston driving to know she didn't want to be on the road unless she had to. Anyway, her fast-approaching-fifty-year-old body could use the exercise.

She walked up Perkins Street, past big old houses that were now apartments, and over to Centre Street, where the store signs and street language were in Spanish, past the Bromley-Heath projects to the Jackson Square bus depot next door. She was on the tip of Roxbury now. She got the number 44 bus and let her mind slip back to the other events of her first day on Miz Inez's job.

Lord! Had she really poked that man? She had a feeling she'd be hearing about that. Shit! And didn't Ray-Ray have a nerve, which was probably one of the reasons she liked him in spite of herself. A poor black person without nerve was a dead person. But that didn't mean she approved of his sneaking onto his mother's job to steal something, which was the only reason she could think of for him sneaking around upstairs. From what Carrie said, he was definitely no stranger to the house, but if he hadn't worked for the Brindles for at least a year, why hadn't Carrie or Wanda found his shirt and given it to Miz Inez to take home, and what did Ray-Ray mean when he said she'd be glad he came? She still didn't know what he'd been doing in the Brindle house, but she knew his shirt didn't have doodly-squat to do with it. Maybe Saxe's pictures did, although it was hard to figure out how Ray-Ray would know Saxe had left them there. But she definitely intended to ask Ray-Ray about those pictures the next time she saw him. And that Carrie! Her and her pastor and her thing for "Mr. Saxe!" Lord! did she have stories to tell Ardell. Blanche got off the bus on Humboldt and walked up the street to Rudigere Homes, eager to be on her own turf.