Chapter 43

In the Gill household, fixed on the wall above the refrigerator was a clock with a white face and green arms in the shape of palm fronds. At six o’clock, Ethel glanced at the clock and then at the door of the apartment, expecting Gwen to come bursting in, babbling about her day.

At six fifteen, Ethel went to the door, opened it, and poked her head into the hallway. By six thirty, she was nervously pacing the floor.

Irene arrived home from work at seven o’clock; Aubrey followed not too long after.

“She probably had trouble with the trains,” Irene commented nonchalantly. Aubrey nodded his head in agreement.

When nine o’clock arrived and Gwen still hadn’t come home, Ethel pulled her winter coat over her nightgown and took her worried pacing out onto the sidewalk.

It was mid-October, Indian summer had its torrid grip on the city, and within minutes, Ethel was soaked in perspiration. Her concern slowly melted into anger, and even at a distance, Gwen could spot the scowl on her mother’s face as soon as she and Harlan rounded the corner.

She rushed ahead of him. “I have to go.”

“Call me!” Harlan hollered after her.

Gwen’s feet may have been walking, but she was sailing on air.

Ethel, drenched from two hours of stalking the neighborhood, looked up and saw Gwen racing toward her—grinning no less—and instantly her already foul mood turned rank.

When Gwen reached striking distance, Ethel’s arm catapulted into the air, her closed fist punched the left side of her daughter’s face and then the right, sending Gwen scrambling into the building.

Ethel trailed Gwen up the stairs, her coat billowing out behind her like a cape. She raised her fist again, catching Gwen on the crown of her head, the second blow hitting the center of her back.

They exploded into the apartment and Aubrey, who had been sitting reading the paper, jumped straight out of his chair. A slicing look from his wife warned him that he’d better mind his business—this was mother-daughter stuff, no men allowed or needed. So Aubrey just stood there, quiet.

Ethel chased Gwen into the bedroom, where she unleashed a barrage of bad words before striking her again, this time across the mouth.

After Ethel charged from the room, Irene, who had been watching silently from her bed, sucked her teeth and spat, “Chuh, you feel you is a big woman now? Running the streets like some wildcat? You deserve them licks!”

Gwen said nothing. She stripped out of her clothes, climbed into bed, and gave Irene her back.

Yes, Gwen’s feelings were bruised, and her lip was split, but none of that could take away from the hour or so she had spent on the train with Harlan. Even as she lay with her face buried in her pillow, still sniffling from her mother’s blows and insults, Gwen was able to smile through her tears. The memory and feel of Harlan’s thigh knocking against her own when the train sped around a bend in the tracks or came to a stuttering stop in the station helped to ease the pain

And oh, how they had talked! They had talked about near everything: her parents, his parents, music, his grandmother who had recently passed away.

“In her sleep,” he had said. “Just like my grandfather.”

A sadness gripped his face and Gwen wouldn’t swear on it, but she thought she saw water in his eyes.

“We just got back from the funeral a few days ago.”

“Where did she live?” Gwen asked.

“Macon, Georgia. You ever been to Georgia?”

“No.”

“It’s nice,” he said, bobbing his head.

How dainty her hand had looked cradled in Harlan’s big one when he scrawled his number in blue ink on her palm.

She played and replayed the feel of his arm around her waist as they ascended the subway steps and his plea as she hurried toward home: “Call me!”