“Tell her it’s the end of the world.”
The maid carried the portable phone to the study. “Mrs. Whitting, someone on the phone for you,” said Anita. “He says to tell you it’s the end of the world.”
The woman at the polished King Louis desk looked up and smiled. She took the phone and spoke to the maid, “Please, dust those bookshelves. I’ve been sneezing all morning.” Then into the phone, she said, “Brody! Where are you? How are you? Are you all right?”
“Whoa. Give a man a chance to say something. I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m still in Houston, working at the community center.”
“Oh, Brody you still haven’t outgrown that adolescent urge to save the world?” Mrs. Whitting watched the girl do her job. Anita’s dark face resembled the gaunt and oval-eyed expression of the wooden carvings from Africa on the shelf next to her.
“Well, someone has to do it.”
“But why you? Why for so long? You know you had your pick of New York law firms when you graduated. It would have broken our father’s heart if he had been alive to see you walk away from all those offers.” Mrs. Whitting stepped up to the bookcase and ran a finger over a dusted shelf.
Anita kept her back to the lady.
“If our father had bothered staying around long enough. But I’m making my mamá proud. She was here the other week. Asked about you.”
Mrs. Whitting lowered her voice and walked into the foyer. “You didn’t tell her where she could find me, did you?”
“I gave you my word. Or does living with all those rich folks make you distrust your kinfolk?”
“Oh, Brody. Why do you speak in that manner?” Her voice raised like a young girl talking to her beau.
“When in Rome, y’know. How are the kids? How’re Debbie and Kathy? Beautiful, like their mother?”
“Oh, they’re doing fine. Kathy’s riding now, did I tell you?” Mrs. Whitting paused at the door of the living room. She scanned the room and was unsatisfied. She walked back to her study.
“What? No glorious comments on the ravishing Debbie?”
“We have a bit of a problem.” She crooked her finger at Anita. The maid followed her.
“What? Is she ill? Has she been hurt?”
“In a manner of speaking. Remember, I told you she was competing to represent the South San district at the city-wide spelling bee?”
“Yeah, but I don’t see what’s the big deal about a spelling bee.”
Mrs. Whitting covered the phone. “Anita, make sure those trays are within reach but not too close to the edge. I wouldn’t want them to be knocked over. I already explained that to you once.” To her brother she said, “It was to her. She lost.”
“Hey, that’s tough. But it’s life. She’ll bounce back.”
“Brody, she lost to a Mexican girl.” Mrs. Whitting looked at her girl. Anita pointed to an almost empty bottle in the liquor cabinet and Mrs. Whitting nodded. “Some girl named Luz Ríos. Such funny names.”
“Sis, hate to break it to you, but Chicanos got brains too.”
“Have, and don’t be condescending.”
Anita held the bottle up.
“Who’s being rude? I’m stating a fact.”
Mrs. Whitting mouthed, “Get a new one,” and into the phone she said, “For your information, we’ve just found out that THAT Mexican girl stole the words used at the competition. I haven’t told Debbie yet, but there’s a good chance she may still be able to go to Austin.”
“The list of words? How could she steal ’em?”
“We both know that they’re crafty enough to do anything.”
Anita kept her spine straight, her head high and her hands close to her side as she walked to the pantry.
“Oh, yeah, we know because we grew up in the same neighborhood as they did. In fact, when mom was ill, it was Mrs. Torres that kept us out of the clutches of the social workers. But I could be wrong.”
“Don’t you get high and mighty with me. I’m still your big sister.”
“Three minutes is all it takes.”
“Lyna Lou, seriously…”
“Brody, I’ve told you to call me Harriet.”
“Just because you married that rich doctor and changed your name don’t make you any less my sister, Lyna Lou Gallagher.”
“It’s Harriet Whitting.”
“So what is the school going to do about the competition?”
“The school board is having a special meeting at South San High School to give Debbie the official okay to represent them at the city-wide competition. Isn’t that exciting?”
“What’s going to happen to that other girl?”
“How should I know? For that matter, why should I care? She probably stole the words because she’s used to having everything handed to her.”
“Handed to her?”
“You know. Affirmative action. These minorities are getting lazier by the minute because they know that by crying discrimination, they get everything served up to them on a silver platter.”
Anita held up the new bottle and Mrs. Whitting nodded.
Brody said, “Because good respectable people work hard to get their rewards. Only the stupid or weak take handouts.”
“Now you’re sounding like daddy.”
“I know.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Lyna Lou, everyday here I see good people suffering…”
“And complaining to you, instead of getting out there and finding a job. If they had any gumption, they would be able to find work.”
Mrs. Whitting pointed to a stain on the carpet. Anita stepped to the closet under the stairway and snatched up a Dust Buster to attack the unforgiven spot.
“That’s right,” said Brody. “I’m talking to the person that worked everyday after school and on weekends.”
Mrs. Whitting stepped out of earshot of the maid. “You know that all our classmates never let me forget that I only had two dresses to wear. That sometimes you had to go to school barefoot. You had more fights because you wouldn’t let anyone laugh at us. You mean to say, you’ve forgotten all that?”
“Not so much forgotten, but forgiven. It just isn’t so important anymore. I work with people that have even less than we did.”
“Oh, the poor minorities.” Mrs. Whitting slipped past Anita as the maid exited from the living room.
“The people of color that I know…”
“People of color. How exotic.” Mrs. Whitting followed Anita into the kitchen.
“Well, it was us white folks that did start calling them coloreds.”
“Oh, Brody, please. You bleeding hearts are all alike.”
“I remember some winters that if it weren’t for those bleeding hearts we wouldn’t have had any shoes or blankets.”
“You can’t compare what we went through with what the minorities are experiencing now. That’s ridiculous.” Mrs. Whitting opened the refrigerator and counted trays.
“How?”
“How what?”
“How is it ridiculous? What’s so different?”
“Lots of ways.” She arched her eyebrows and Anita scooted from the dishwasher to stand next to Mrs. Whitting in front of the refrigerator.
“Well, let’s see, you worked your fingers to the bone from secretary, to office manager, to associate assistant, to supervisor, and was just on your way to a top-floor executive office when you met the rich Doctor Whitting and abandoned your career.”
“Right. I worked.” Mrs. Whitting pointed at the fruit bowl and held up two fingers.
“Not in the fields.”
“Exactly.”
Anita squatted near the lower shelf of the refrigerator. She cradled one dish in an arm and another on her lap while, with her free hand, she held the second bowl of fruit up in the air for inspection.
“I remember a few summers that you and I…”
“Brody, please.” Mrs. Whitting nodded.
“That’s the point, Lyna Lou.”
“Harriet.”
“They’re the same as us.”
“Yeah, because they were more willing to give the job to poor white trash rather than to a person of color.”
Mrs. Whitting had taken a step and stopped.
Silence.
“Lyna Lou, you there?”
Anita could not get up without bumping Mrs. Whitting. She stayed as she was, her arms cramping.
Quiet.
“Harriet?”
“Never use those words with me.”
“Why? Because it offends your high-society nose? What would your high falutin’ friends say if they knew you grew up in a shack? That you and I stole a roll of tar paper to cover the roof one spring because we were getting rained on?”
Mrs. Whitting walked into the foyer and Anita slumped to the floor, put the bowls down and rubbed her calves.
“Brody, you’re overstepping your limits here.”
“Maybe, sweet sister, you’re understepping yours.”
“How? I am not making excuses for them.”
“When is Debbie doing the competition? I’ll get some time off and drive over and cheer for her.”
“Uh, Brody, well, I’m not sure exactly when…”
“Lyna Lou, I’ve made my point.”
“It’s not that I’m ashamed of you. Really.”
“What else can you call it?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Damn.” She heard him slap the side of his head. “I’m the one with the law degree and I’m slow. No one there knows where you come from.”
“Uh.”
“Oh. No one knows about me?”
“Of course, they know I have a brother and that you’re a lawyer.” From the living room, she looked out the French doors at the tables covered with white linen out on the terrace.
“But not the part that I work non-profit in the barrio.”
“Brody, you can be so aggravating.”
“Uh huh, she’s changed the subject so that can only mean one thing. There’s something else. Let me see. Oh, man. I don’t believe it. Where have you told them I live?”
“In New York.”
“What? I couldn’t hear you?”
“In New York. There, are you satisfied?”
Silence.
“Brody, you just don’t understand…”
“Understand? As in you’re ashamed of your own family. As in you’re embarrassed by your own roots. As in you haven’t spoken with your mother…in how long?”
“Yes. Yes, I am, but I wouldn’t use those exact words. These people would never accept me as their own if they knew how I grew up. They wouldn’t romanticize the poverty we grew up in. Not like you and your bleeding heart friends do.”
“And Mamá?”
“You usually don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“No, I refuse to spell it out and let you off the hook.”
“Listen, Brody, Mamá wouldn’t fit into my life now.”
“I’m certain she wouldn’t. All those high-society friends of yours wouldn’t have one clue as to how to relate to Mamá except as a cleaning lady.”
“That’s unfair.”
“But true.”
She was quiet. Her breath carried over the line. “There were so many men. She could never hang onto one for very long.”
“Yeah, that sucked. But it was also a sign of the times.”
“What?”
“At the time, it wasn’t right for a woman to live alone like they do now. Having a man in the house made it easier for all of us financially.”
“The cost was too high.”
“True. Some of the ones she picked weren’t up there for the father-of-the-year award, but that’s no reason not to see your own ma.”
“Brody, you’ve never called our mother ma. You only do that when you’re trying to appear uneducated.”
“Caught me.”
Mrs. Whitting could practically hear the grin on her brother’s face. “And you dare accuse me of trying to pretend I’m something I’m not.”
“Lyna Lou…”
“Harriet.”
“Yeah. How come you won’t talk with her? There has to be more to it than just your high-society friends.”
Mrs. Whitting was back in her office. She looked out through the French doors onto the rose garden and saw another yard—packed dirt, a bare, thorny rose bush with no buds, a herd of noisy small children playing with rocks and sticks.
Over the line Brody’s voice crowded the picture she was remembering. “I’ve got an idea of what happened.”
The “house” had been a three-room shanty, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.
His voice changed. “But I wanted you to tell me.”
She and her brother had dragged from the dump an old plaid sofa which had sagged in the middle.
“I’ve waited for you to tell me.”
And the smell. That had been the worst. Fried grease. Lye soap. Dirt washed off, but the smell had stayed in her nose forever.
Mrs. Whitting licked her lips. “It was right after graduation. I was getting ready to go to work. You know how hard it was to get any privacy in that place.” Mrs. Whitting guessed her brother was nodding his head. “Stepfather number five was between jobs. He came into the bedroom.” She gulped for air to fill the lungs that were compressing with fear. “He tried to kiss me.”
“Sis, I’m sorry. You never said…”
“But I did.”
“Who’d you tell?” The pitch of the wire hum grew higher, then settled down to a low hum again. “Oh. What did mom say? Did she accuse you of lying?”
“No. At least not that. But…” Mrs. Whitting brushed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “She said since I was moving out anyway there’d be no reason to start something.” A sob slipped across the line.
“That’s why you left a month earlier than planned?”
“Uh huh. I had to sleep on the floor of the preacher’s house, but it was worth it.”
“You told our uncle?”
“Yes, but I had to tell Billie Ray. I had to do something to keep the little ones safe.”
“No, you did good. I remember the fight that our uncle had with him. Our stepfather left shortly after you did.”
“He came to see me in San Antone.”
“He did? I never heard about that.”
“He found me working for the church and told the preacher I was some kind of sinner. Accused me right to my face.” Harriet pressed her face against the cool pane of glass.
“I wish I had known. I would have knocked him clear over the other county. What came of it?”
“I told the preacher the truth. He believed me and told the man to either stay and cleanse his soul or take his soiled presence away from God.”
“That’s good. The right thing to do. But why won’t you see mom now?”
“It’ll take some time before I can forget that she didn’t protect me, that she picked him over me.” She gulped. “I’m sorry, Brody. I just don’t have the kind of forgiving heart you do.”
“It’s understandable. Just don’t take too long, Lyna Lou. Ma’s not getting any younger. Living with those types took a toll on her, too.”
“So I should forgive her because she couldn’t…”
“Whoa. I’m not saying anything. She was a victim just as much as you were. Victims are not good at protecting themselves, much less at teaching their children to protect themselves. Just like, I’m sure, you’re teaching your girls how to stand up for themselves now.”
“You can bet on that. That’s why this Mexican girl is not going to get away with stealing first place from my Debbie. I’ll run her into the dirt she came from before I let her hurt my daughter.”
“Sis, you may be going to the extreme.”
“Never. My daughters are going to know without a doubt that I’m on their side.”
“I’m sure they know that already. But sacrificing that poor little girl is not the way to teach them how to stand up for themselves.”
“Brody, you just don’t understand the situation. I’m here. I see how they act. Don’t you trust me to know what I see?”
There was a hesitation on the line. “Of course, I do. It’s just that sometimes our histories tend to cloud our view of certain situations.”
“I can reassure you that I’m definitely not doing that in these circumstances. My intentions address the issues directly.”
Anita stepped into the library.
“Plus when it comes to dealing with minorities, I have a much more subjective attitude than you do. I deal with them as people, not as some downtrodden mass in need of special handouts.” Harriet spotted Anita and covered the phone.
Anita reported, “Mrs. Thatcher will be here in a half an hour.”
Harriet waved the girl away. “Brody, I’ve enjoyed talking with you, as always. But I have a luncheon that will be getting under way in less than an hour. I have to go, little brother.”
“Don’t forget, Lyna Lou, you’ve been looking up to my six-three since we were thirteen years old.”
Harriet laughed and said, “It’s Harriet.”
“Always remember, when you’re standing among all those high-society dames, I love you, Lyna Lou.”
“And I love you, Brody.” They hung up. Harriet handed the portable phone to Anita as she walked upstairs. “When she arrives, escort Mrs. Thatcher into the den. I’ll change and be down.”
Anita watched Mrs. Whitting slip into her bedroom to change for the third time that day. That woman had more outfits then Anita’s whole family would own in a year.
Several hours later, amid all the society ladies that were attending the prestigious luncheon, Mrs. Harriet Whitting listened attentively as one woman recounted the adventures of her trip abroad. “We had to change planes in this quaint airport. I didn’t mind, except for all those raggedy kids let loose. Someone should do something with them. It just wasn’t right.”
Another woman added, “I know just what you mean. My husband and I were traveling to Houston just last week. Well, the trucks we passed had whole families packed in the back. One of those children could fall off and been crushed by a car before their parents would know.”
Anita offered them a tray of hors d’oeuvres.
The woman who had traveled said, “You know, with as many children as those people have, they probably wouldn’t even notice if one was missing.”
A woman with short brown hair said, “All I can say is I’m glad they love to do stoop labor.”
“I heard they have an extra disk in their spine that enables them to do the work in the fields.”
Harriet laughed. “Oh that isn’t true and you know it. You’re just teasing us.”
“Harriet, you’re such an innocent. You wouldn’t know what to do if you found yourself living like they do.”
“That’s right, Harriet,” said the woman with short brown hair. “I can’t imagine you in anything less than the best this life has to offer. You were born to this life. Anyone with a fine eye can see that.”
Harriet lowered her eyes, sipped from her china cup and smiled.
As Anita stepped away, she watched her employer and smiled, too.