ESTHER FLICKED SALT INTO the pie dough and gathered up the sticky ball to roll out crusts for the two quiches. Fitting them into the pretty crimp-edged dishes, crumbling bacon onto the bottom of each, she didn’t even have to look at her hands. From the kitchen window, she saw the baby’s wet clothes hanging on the drying rack she used specially for them—the tiny squares were all fit together like a quilt, pale in the sun. She sprinkled onions onto the bacon. Quiche Lorraine. She couldn’t even remember where she’d first seen the recipe, or why she’d made it, but now everyone on the Westside expected it when they came to the house. Dense, creamy stuff with flaky crust, something no one else she knew ever made.
Quiche Esther. With greens folded in thick, soft strips through the eggs and cheese. She pulled the collards from their pot to press the water out; chicken spattered in the frying pan next to her. Cole slaw already chilling in the refrigerator. Rich green water trailed from under the wooden spoon when she pushed at the greens, and then she saw a square of red blur past the window. A slow blur. Yeah, there she went again—the woman driving the sportscar. What was it? A Triumph, Joe had told her. Esther’s husband Joe loved him some cars. And this woman driving past loved her some Joe.
“She’s out there again,” Esther called toward the living room, where Regina was keeping Arlene company, but they must not have heard, because they would have run into the kitchen in a minute to see what she looked like.
She cruised by slow enough that Esther met her eyes. Cinnamon skin, straightened hair in a bob, and Esther could tell just by the way she held her head that her nails were long and perfect, her eyelashes curled and thickened to fans. Esther smiled into the glass. And the woman’s hand came out the car window, graceful as a nodding flower, to rest on the edge of the door; wrist smooth, thin, no strong pushing-out veins and long blunt fingers like Esther’s. The car crept away slow as a pillbug, Esther still smiling, but when it was gone she felt nervous warmth in her chest.
“This girl wants my husband bad,” she said out loud, pressing the greens one last time and laying them over the bacon. She paused at the sink, staring at the lime tint from the greens water—was that the baby crying? No. But she heard Regina and Arlene from the living room. Now how in the world did they get started talking about that?
“Uh-uh, she had extensions. That girl’s hair was real thin, you could tell. Them pale, pale blondes don’t have no thick hair, not enough for all the braids she had in that movie.”
“I don’t know, Regina. I saw her on TV later, and her hair was pretty long.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t long. I said if she didn’t have nobody else’s hair put in we wouldn’ta seen nothing but ten braids and a whole lotta scalp.”
“And after the movie came out, all the white girls started wearing cornrows. Talking about Bo Derek created the look.”
Regina snorted. “Shit. Esther was doing some bad braids years before Slow Bo ever showed up.”
Esther walked into the living room, laughing at Regina bent over a magazine. She’d figured—Regina read every magazine Esther kept for customers, and thought it was her job to tell them what was important. “Arlene, you come all the way from L.A. just to listen to this crazy woman, or you want me to do your hair?” Esther laid the hair she’d bought for Arlene on the table.
Arlene pressed a forefinger into Regina’s soft shoulder. “She is the news,” she said. “No, Esther, you know I’ve been waiting for two months for you to do me. I forgot you always take off with each baby.”
Esther bent to the bassinet, where the baby slept with her face crushed to the pad, fat cheek twitching. “Look, she’s smiling those fake smiles,” Esther said, and the women came to see. “Those little jerky ones in her sleep, where she doesn’t even know what’s making her happy.” The grins flashed and left the baby lips quick as sparks.
“Sweet dreams,” Regina said. “Dream ’em now.”
“Where you want to sit?” Esther asked Arlene. It would take all day and some of the evening to do what Arlene wanted—rows curving around her perfect forehead, all to the right side except three braids woven with gold thread around her left ear, those tiny tails hanging alone to sparkle.
“Start on the floor, I guess,” she said. “You comfortable on the couch?”
“I better be comfortable anywhere,” Esther said, “we only got an hour before the baby want to eat again.” She held up some of the bought hair to Arlene’s. The same brown, lit with copper way inside. She smiled. That was why women always came back to her, because she matched the hair perfectly, braided it so that their faces came first. Nobody left her house with hair looking like it belonged on somebody else.
“She keeps driving by,” Esther said, parting and pushing Arlene’s hair.
“Uh-uh. While you was in the kitchen?” Regina said, eyebrows jumping.
“I don’t know what she wants me to do,” Esther said.
“Who’s this?” Arlene asked.
“Woman from Oakland,” Esther said, knowing Regina’s eyes were on her.
“Yeah, she got a fatal attraction for Joe Killer,” Regina said.
“I never knew how he got that name,” Arlene said.
“You know that song, ‘Killer Joe…’” Regina hummed. “When we was in school, Joe was so pretty somebody called him that, and he said, ‘not me, I’m Joe Killer.’” She looked at Esther, checking, and Esther smiled.
“Everybody had big naturals then, remember?” Esther said. “And Joe’s was so big he couldn’t fit through the classroom doors sometimes.”
“Y’all telling some lies now.” Arlene laughed.
“No, now, serious. He was real light, had that hair—the girls use to fall out for him.” Regina touched the bassinet and sat down at the kitchen table, where the napkins and paper plates were arranged. “Joe Killer.” She looked at the TV. “Esther, Frank came by the other day and said that woman done bought her a condo up there in Hillgrove. She got a job at Rohr—some kinda executive secretary.”
“How Frank know?”
“His cousin works out there. I guess she talks a lot, this woman, I mean.”
Esther could feel by the strain in Arlene’s neck that she wanted to know more, so she said what she always did when she wanted to think. “I have to do this—lemme get it right, now.”
Arlene’s head tilted very slightly toward the TV, and Esther watched her own fingers splay out, pinch back again and again in the hair. The fingers were ashy up by the knuckles, from doing the baby’s wash, and glistening black at the tips from the light hairdress. You so black you sweat coffee. She and Regina and the other girls had been standing around the steps in high school, years ago, and when she’d tried to loudtalk Alvin James, “Shut up, Esther, you so black you sweat coffee” rang against the brick walls.
“Yeah, brother, and I’m so light I sweat cream.” Joe Killer said it with a warning in his gray eyes. The first time he’d ever acknowledged the time he spent with her—Alvin jumped back dramatically and said, “Joe Killer, is that you, man?”
“That’s me, brother.” Esther thought now that she hadn’t heard anyone say that in years. The boys told each other who they were attached to, in those words, who they had become. Joe was her.
They always waited for her to speak again first. “Arlene, you wouldn’t believe this woman,” she said. “Now Joe been had his flings, it’s a part of him, and I told myself I couldn’t mind. Tell me I’m crazy, but George Green, used to be the history teacher at the high school, remember him, Regina? He would talk about how in Africa, men had several wives because they had to—men got killed in war, hunting, and women needed a break between babies.”
“Yeah, easy to say and hard to do,” Arlene said.
“But I had the first three babies all in a row, so quick, and I was always tired. I told Joe, serious, he was on the road driving the truck, and I told him go on and have some fun. I won’t lie, it hurt the first couple of times he told me he did something. Cause he always told me.” She swept loose hairs into her hand. “When he came home, I wasn’t waiting for it. I waited for him, but not the bed.”
“Come on, everybody’s love come down,” Regina said. “Shoot, Victor too damn tired to do anything when he come home.”
“Regina, I’m not trying to prove Joe’s a stud.” She shook her head. “Forget it.”
“No, come on with it.” Arlene’s head pulled against Esther’s fingers.
“That’s just the way things work. Except this woman from Oakland thinks she’s taking him away.”
Regina said, “The baby’s wakin up. I’ma get her. What you think Miss Oaktown plannin to do?”
Esther stopped and looked at the baby’s bobbing head. “I don’t know. Come in here and whup me? Drive by till I move? Huh.”
Stroking the baby’s shoulder, Esther felt those long pauses when the sucking slowed, the eyes flickered, and then the lips pulled again hurriedly like the baby thought she’d never eat again. She looked at Arlene, watching the first of the soaps with Regina, and thought that the braids were coming along nice. Esther felt tiredness fan out across her back, and she wished Green Hollows hadn’t been demolished. All the old people had lived there, and Miss Rosa used to walk up from her house in the hollow every day, to cook the chicken and do the salads, until she’d had to move. Now Esther had to start cooking before 7:00, and then do the wash and clean before people came. The baby dug her bare toes into Esther’s leg, and shoes walked across her brain. She’d had to buy new ones for the four older kids last week; Colette, the baby, no, not the baby anymore, Colette was in kindergarten now and wanted a backpack like the others.
Why was she up here thinking about money? She always made plenty between the braiding and the food; chicken was bulk at the warehouse; she bought cheap bacon because it was just the trace of flavor the quiches needed, and the greens were free. Her greens tree, the one Red Man had given her years ago, gnarled strong and thick up the fence in the back.
Two dollars a plate. Money wasn’t doing this to her scalp, itching and pulling worry tight around her ears. She could have gotten a job years ago, when she took clerical courses at the city college, but she liked staying home with the babies. Spending a whole hour staring at them: the tiny arms were so straight, only two deep wrinkles and a dimple for an elbow, the knuckles just dots where the fingers began. She felt this baby’s head heavy against her arm now, the thick folds of neck stretching when she lolled back. Joe brought home enough money. But he hadn’t called today, and lunchtime was coming. She drew her fingers backwards against her eyebrows, down her nose.
“I’ma put Porscha in the back room to sleep, so she’ll take a long nap,” Esther said.
Arlene walked over to touch the baby’s soft curls. “Look at that hair. She was sleeping so good in here, let her stay.” Esther dipped her head in a question. “She smells like baby so strong I get it all across the room,” Arlene said, embarrassed. “I always loved that smell.”
But Esther walked down the hallway. She knew the baby would sleep fine in the bassinet, but she wanted five more minutes with her. Sliding her onto the crib sheet belly-first, she laid a hand on the skin so perfect, so light. All the children were gold, with Joe’s neat small eyebrows and nose. What had they gotten from her? Only her hands, she thought, big and square. And the half she’d given to the gold, the darkness added to Joe’s light. Perfect skin—she loved to stare at them when they were too small to know she was looking—no scars on their cheeks, no lines around their mouths. Glossy eyes and unmarked as girls in the magazines on the coffee table, there for customers. I’m standing here thinking this way because of her, she thought. Because I know each baby comes home and people say, “Lucky it ain’t black as Esther. Blueblood kids got it hard.” And the women, all these years, talking about, “Why Joe Killer want to stay with old black Esther? Don’t know how he find her in the dark to make all them babies.” She put the heels of her hands to her neck and went back to the front room.
“Why you name her Porscha?” Arlene asked when Esther picked up another section of hair.
“I didn’t, I let Joe name her. He named the first one, and he wanted a Lil Joe, He said he would name this last one. ‘I ain’t never gon be able to buy what I really want, so I’ma call her Porscha, closest I’ll get to having me one in my name.’”
Regina said, “All your kids got pretty names. Lil Joe the only common one.”
Esther said, “Yeah, I always wanted them to know right off when somebody was calling them. Nobody’s likely to say ‘Danique who?’”
“How old is Danique now?” Arlene said.
“Huh. Lil Joe’s eleven, Danique just turned nine, Anaïs is… seven. Colette’s six. The names—I found them at French class. That’s where I met Joe.”
“You a lie,” Regina said. “I don’t remember that.”
“You weren’t there,” Esther laughed. “Serious. His mama’s Creole from Louisiana, and she had some idea Joe should be speaking French. I was taking it for college, and we were the only soul in there, I mean nothing but prep-track white kids.”
“And you named your kids after some gray boys?”
“Can Joe speak French?” Arlene said.
“Ha! Copied offa me every day. Barely says quiche right.” Esther tilted Arlene’s head. “So in the French book I read about these two women, Anaïs Nin and Colette. I knew Anaïs was a woman’s name, but when he was born, he was so pale, didn’t get any color for a year. Light as that French woman’s picture, and all this black hair straight in points over his forehead. Fringing down like a girl. The name looked like him.”
“That hair got nappy soon enough,” Regina said.
“Anaïs and Colette. What about Danique?” Arlene asked.
“I made that up.” Esther smiled.
“Ooh, look at what that boy up to now!” Regina called, standing by the TV, and Arlene listened to “All My Children.” Esther never paid much attention to the soaps, even though they were on all day for Regina. She felt something connect, something she’d been puzzling out earlier… the quiche recipe. It was in that French textbook, too. Essays about food, wine, Edith Piaf. But Edith was just too ugly to name a child, she smiled to herself. That was what she’d thought. And Lil Joe came the next year, after she’d graduated and was going to Rio Seco City College. She’d been braiding hair already, for friends, then, experimenting, and somebody offered her twenty-five dollars to do braids for her wedding.
A man’s voice crashed through the screen door, making everyone jump. “Esther, get out here and see if you want this old ugly thang.” She saw Floyd, who lived across the street; he and his nephew Snooter had backed their truck into her driveway, and a long couch poked out the end of the truckbed.
“I ain’t never seen a couch that long,” Regina said. “Who gon give you a couch?”
“Your mama called me into Miss Lindstrom’s house,” Floyd said. “She said Miss Linsey getting rid of this, got all hew furniture. I told your mama it need to go to the dump, it’s so ugly, but she said bring it to you.”
The fabric was faded brocade, dull and gold, but the couch could fit six people easily, Esther thought. “Tina can cover it for me.”
Floyd and Snooter carried it to the edge of the front steps. “How old is Miss Linsey now?” Esther asked, giving Floyd some sun tea.
“Eighty somethin,” Snooter said.
“Your mama been workin for her long as I been cutting grass,” Floyd said, wiping his forehead with his hat. “All the other domestics I see now are Mexican. Berta the only one left to talk to. You make that pie this week? You done taken enough time off with that baby?”
Esther brought them each a plate, and they sat on the steps. “Where Joe Killer this week?” Snooter asked.
“He had to take some furniture to Nashville. He said he’d be home to barbecue this weekend.” But he still hadn’t called, and it was way past noon.
Snooter bit into the chicken and said, “Oh, shit.” Esther looked back quickly, but it was because Marcella and Gail had pulled up.
“You never came by to see me, fool man,” Gail said, lip poked out at Snooter. “You was gon bring by a video.”
“Y’all got lunch break already?” Esther said. “Let me go inside and get back to Arlene.” But Marcella pulled her arm.
“Somebody want you, Esther,” she said, nodding toward the street.
“Where she gon park?” Floyd said. “You want me to move the truck?”
“I don’t think she’s fixing to stop,” Esther said, and the red Triumph went past, a little faster this time.
“This is Arlene, ladies. She came in from L.A., and today’s her only day off, so I need to stop messing around.”
Marcella nodded. “Ain’t you Tina’s cousin?”
“Uh-huh, that’s how she came to me,” Esther said.
“And who is this? I’ve never seen her,” Marcella said at the table, where Regina sat.
“Shut up, girl,” Regina frowned. She always waited for someone else to start eating before she broke down.
“What the news?” Gail asked. Regina looked at Esther.
“Somebody named Miss Oaktown,” Esther said.
“She trying to maneuver,” Regina said, cutting into the quiche.
“That girl in the red car looking fire at you?” Marcella said, and Esther nodded. She could tell by the way Arlene’s head swayed slightly that she was sleepy, and she remembered her mother’s warm fingers in her own hair. Only a few times had she sat and braided Esther’s hair—usually she was too tired when she came home from somebody else’s dinner. And she pushed Esther away when Esther tried to soothe her, to touch her stiff curls. “Just let me get some rest, now,” she always said. “Go on.”
And here she was, waiting for Porscha to wake up again, to make those little snuffling sounds that Esther could hear all the way in the front yard; none of her babies ever had to cry before she knew they wanted her.
This was the last baby. Every time Esther fed her, held a foot in her hand while the cheek pressed into her breast, she thought that the helplessness, the stare into her eyes, would be over too quickly. She had measured and compared everything by baby standards for so long, by baby feel—the plump curve of Arlene’s chin when Esther cupped her hand underneath to lift the head: that was soft and padded as baby knees. Regina’s lips were full and lush as a nursing mouth. Esther listened, but she didn’t hear any soft sounds underneath the laughter and talking, the television and the cars passing in the street.
When they started to pull against her hands, to sit up, she loved that, too. Teaching them to hold things, to walk, to read… somebody had said to her once, “They like kittens, and then they just cats and nobody want em,” and Esther got angry. Lil Joe’s wrists turned bony as his arms grew, his two extra chins disappeared, and she watched breathlessly when his eyes got harder as he figured things out for himself.
It was one o’clock. Maybe Joe had found another woman in Nashville, serious this time. No, come on. But maybe he’d gone to Oaktown’s condo first, maybe he was back in Rio Seco already.
“Esther, what these kids doing home so early?” Regina hollered, and Esther frowned, blinked. Lil Joe, Danique, all of them were trooping in the kitchen door with their backpacks trailing.
“Teachers got some kind of meeting today,” Lil Joe said. “Half day of school is all.”
“They never had that when we were in school,” Marcella said.
“Where’s baby Porscha, Mama?” Colette alternated between kissing her sister’s hands and refusing to touch her. Esther thought, she’s been the baby for so long. “Go see,” she said to Colette.
Lil Joe went back with her and came out holding Porscha. “She was rooting around like that pig we seen in the movie,” he said, pushing his nose against her stomach. “Beat box belly on the baby,” he blew against her skin.
“Arlene, I’ma feed her. Lay down and take a nap,” Esther said.
“No, I want to see the end of General Hospital.”
Just as she opened her blouse, the phone rang, and Esther picked it up from the floor. “Hey,” Joe said. “What up?”
“Feeding the baby.” Esther felt the heat rise in her throat, rather than fall away. He sounded long distance. Am I going to think about that damn condo every morning.
“She still don’t want nobody holding her unless they got groceries, huh?” he said. “That’s my baby. I’ma be home tomorrow—I’m in Amarillo.”
“You still planning to barbecue?” Esther asked. The baby pulled hard, and the sharp tingle of milk rushed down. “Yeah. Why?”
“Thought maybe you had ideas about being busy.”
“What you want, Esther? What you trying to talk about?”
“Your friend from up north got a condo. I heard.”
“Shit, Esther. I told her about you. I told her find somebody else, that’s why she’s doing this. Man, you know…”
“I know she thinks different.”
“I told her you my wife, Rio Seco my city, and she got mad. I’ma send Snooter over there—he’ll make her forget about me real quick.” Joe laughed, but low so he could hear what she did, as always. Esther imagined what the woman had said to Joe, how she’d laughed when she saw Esther through the window, in the yard. This wife with Joe Killer? she probably said to herself. She so…
“Don’t even think about it,” he said.
“Yeah,” Esther said. “So easy for you to say.”
“It’s on you as much as on me,” he said. “You want it this way. You told me after the baby…”
“I know. I just thought maybe you decided to have two in the same city.”
“Don’t even trip like that. She just thinks she’s hard. I’ll take care of it.”
Esther laughed. “You sound so puffed up with yourself. Just get home because your kids want ribs and I ain’t hardly cooking all that.”
Marcella and Gail were washing their hands in the kitchen. And Regina was watching her. “Look at this mess on TV,” Regina said. “You get in a accident, these lawyers are sure to get you some cash.”
“Like hitting the lotto, girl,” Gail said.
“Yeah, but your money would be gone so fast.” Arlene shook her head. “People never hold onto a big lump of money like that.”
“Let me hold her,” Marcella said. “Me and Gail on split shift today.”
“I wondered why you weren’t in a hurry to get back,” Esther said, while Porscha’s eyes followed her all the way back to the couch. She pulled another section of hair from the long bolt.
“You always use good hair,” Marcella said. “Where they get all that real stuff? They be making that cheap fiber hair, look fake, too.”
“The lady at the supply store said it comes from Italy.” Esther picked at the strands. “I always think of what they must look like, the ones that cut their hair. They don’t make hardly any money for it.”
Anaïs ran into the living room. “Mama, a white man standing in the yard writing.”
“What? You got a policy man, Esther?” Gail asked.
“No, probably want to sell me a vacuum cleaner. Go tell him I don’t want anything.”
Lil Joe came in behind Anaïs. “His car got a picture on the door. City of Rio Seco.”
Esther’s heart beat fast. “Somebody from the city?” Joe had already called. But who came to tell you if somebody died? Her mother was at Miss Linsey’s. Was something wrong with Joe’s truck? He always parked it in the vacant lot at the end of the street. Illegal for sure.
The man waited at the door. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m from the city’s licensing arm. Do you have a license to run this business?”
“What are you talking about?” Esther said.
“May I come in?” He followed her, stood looking at everyone. “Are you doing day care?”
“Huh? These kids are all mine.”
He raised one brow fast as a roach, and dropped it. “Well, someone called to say that…”
“To say we only allowed one kid now?” Esther stared. “Who called?”
“We had a complaint about the amount of traffic, the number of cars for a residence. It appears that you’re operating some kind of business, and I’m just trying to ascertain for the city whether you’re licensed.”
“A license to have kids?”
“Is this a beauty and hair-care operation?” He stared at the hair from Italy as if it were a snake.
“I’m doing hair for my cousins.”
“You have a lot of cousins.” He smiled.
“We only allowed one cousin, too? Another new law?”
“Look, as I said, someone complained that cars were blocking the street.”
“Don’t make me ask about the limit on cars, too, now,” Esther said, smiling. The street. “I think I know what the problem is, and it’s not me.” She looked at Regina. “Oaktown.”
“No. How she do that?”
“She’s a secretary.” Esther pulled her lips up again, grinning fake as a dreaming Porscha. “We have a big family,” she said to the man, and he looked at the basket on the table, filled with one dollar bills, surrounded by crumbs from the quiche crust.
“I’m sorry to barge in.” He let Esther lead him out, and she watched him stare at the couch, make notes about the cars, Floyd’s trucks.
“Poor Floyd,” she called back into the living room. “They probably gon get him for that expired tag now.”
“And all because somebody jealous,” Regina said.
“You think Joe knows?” Arlene asked. Esther stroked the Italian hair, watched Porscha’s eyes squint with happiness when her mama’s face come into view.
“No, he’d laugh silly. Pretty strange idea, to call the city.”
“Where she get that?” Regina said.
“So that was it,” Esther said. “That was her best shot.” She stood up to catch Anaïs by the ears, steer him toward the table. He never wanted to eat in front of people, and her hand pushed steady at the back of his neck.