MARCUS HAD SAID YEARS AGO, “You know the Saint Streets? I always thought they were cool.”
The streets were narrow, shaded with huge carob trees, and the houses were mostly Craftsman bungalows from the early 1900s, with wide front porches edged by stones. The neighborhood was quiet, except for two kids skateboarding and two old women sitting on a porch.
St. Ignatius Street was dark, with old cement-post streetlamps glowing amber between the carob branches. I squinted at the addresses, and stopped across the street from 4454. Kelly Cloder’s house—the same blue two-story, flat colonial front, black shutters, the hedges along the foundation like dusty green biscuits in the heat.
It felt like eighth grade.
I had wanted to swim in a pool that day. Not the canal. When we walked up this sidewalk, the yards all crisscrossed with dark hedges, I could hear the pools. The humming of all the filters vibrating in the air just above the sidewalk, near our legs, like the earth was holding in a mindless song.
Was it the first time I lied?
“I love your nation,” Kelly Cloder said to me after Christmas, when I’d been moved to the gifted education cluster class after I scored high on two tests. Mr. Dalton, who was young and had a blond braid he tied with leather, had told us to create our own countries.
Kelly Cloder’s nation was Royale, a place like Monaco, Paris, and Luxembourg, she said in her presentation. Mountains with ski chalets and lakes with boats. The language was Royale, which had Frenchified words and lots of e’s on the ends.
My nation was the island of Cigale, which was what my mother called the hummingbirds that visited her flowers. I drew bays and inlets on my map, because I’d loved those words when we learned geography. Flowers and sugarcane grew for the gross national product. I had seen sugarcane, in Louisiana. Native people spoke Evola, the language of love. Every word was backwards.
Kelly Cloder’s eyes were as blue as an old milk of magnesia bottle.
“You must be Hawaiian,” she said.
I’d only smiled. Mr. Dalton was saying we needed to know words like peninsula and strait, because in a few years we’d have the SAT.
“What island are you from?” she said. “I went to Oahu last year.”
I’d smiled again and thought quickly. My brothers joked about Maui Wowie—some marijuana Clarette’s brother Alphonse said he’d smoked. “Maui,” I said.
“That’s so cool! You’re coming to my pool party, right?” she said.
I talked Cerise into walking with me, but Glorette just shook her head. We had never deviated from our walk to school and home, and when Cerise and I went under the freeway overpass, where pigeon crap and human pee dampened the ground, she said, “I don’t even want to swim with white girls.”
But she stayed with me as we walked downtown, past the Singer store, and down the sidewalk past big houses, and then into the narrow gap between green leaves. We went around back to where girls were pulling themselves up by the coping. White girls didn’t wear swim caps. They just ducked under the water and then lifted their foreheads to the sky, and the water streamed off their skulls and left their hair plastered smooth.
At school, their hair was all Farrah Fawcett wings, blown back in big round curves, but at the swim party, the white girls had small heads like helmets.
A white man stood near the sliding glass door. “Well, you girls must be looking for the powder room.” Mr. Cloder held his newspaper. “Oh—you must be the girl from Maui,” he said, studying me.
Cerise was frozen in the entryway. He turned to her, and rubbed his first finger on his chin, his chin that looked lavender in the sun, with black dots like pepper. “You, too?” he said. His eyes changed—the pupils and the blue part. What did he see? I saw Cerise—twelve freckles on her cheeks, the baby hairs plastered to her forehead like black lace after our long sweaty walk. Then he moved toward her and put his finger on her shoulder. He rotated the pad of his finger, turned her, said, “Go that way, and you’ll find it. You’re letting out all the air.”
I didn’t pay any attention to Cerise when she walked around the pool and navigated slowly near the shallow end, where girls were sitting at the edge, their knees bony like oranges had been sewn under their skin. I knew it was mean. But my hair would be straight as soon as it dried. I dove into the pool. If I stayed underwater, no one would see my old blue bathing suit, the one we’d gotten at Kmart.
Kelly came up behind Cerise and said, “Marco Polo!” and pushed her to deep water. By the time we got out, Cerise’s hair matted up like a Brillo pad because the curls had gotten wet, and then dry, over and over. The sun and chlorine and water had pulled everything up tight to the back of her neck, which was pale as tissue. Cerise felt it and said, “My maman gon kill you. For reals.”
When we played Marco Polo the second time, Kelly Cloder waved her hands blindly, wildly, and her fingers landed on Cerise’s head. “Eeew! Who put a sponge in the pool!”
When we got out again, Kelly Cloder studied Cerise and turned to me. “You’re not from Maui.”
“Neither are you.”
“I was born in Santa Barbara.”
“So?”
“You’re not Hawaiian. You’re black.”
“You’re so dumb you think they don’t have black people in Hawaii? How’d you make it to gifted education?”
I picked up our stuff from the chaise longues that had felt like oilcloth against my legs. I had wanted to lie on something puffy like that. And I had.
When Cerise and I made it home, she told right away. My plan had been to say because it was the last day, we all jumped into the school pool, but Miss Felonise knew her daughter wouldn’t have messed up that hair they’d straightened for the graduation photo.
On the porch, Cerise told my mother and Miss Felonise about Kelly Cloder’s house, and why we left, and about Mr. Cloder, who’d put his forefinger on that knob of bone when she was heading the wrong way, deeper into the house.
“He touch her?” my mother said, while Cerise’s mother plucked at her solid mass of hair. Then my mother beckoned to me with her own forefinger—Quo fa? What happen?—and she slapped me so hard I fell onto the hot wooden steps.
She told us the story of Mr. McQuine. She told us about the three girls, and how the rest of them left except for Anjolie, and she stayed inside, and that my father told her he would take care of Mr. McQuine.
She told us about the car, the ditch, the burning. She told us my father used a piece of wood, and I closed my eyes. Imagined the blood.
During the steady murmur of words, she and Miss Felonise combed out Cerise’s giant dreadlock, which took over an hour and required almond oil, warm chamomile tea, and seven pearly drops of Jergens in a bowl.
I hadn’t seen Marcus since Glorette’s funeral.
He told me that day he’d bought a house. He’d said, “I’m finally having a kid.”
Finally. He didn’t know and never would that I had carried some of his blood. A baby that wasn’t a baby.
I parked across from a shingled bungalow with bright turquoise paint and pale yellow trim, and on either side of the buttery-gold door, big red pots filled with white angel trumpet bushes with their blooms hanging thick like hundreds of celestial instruments.
There were two bikes on the porch. Saronn had a daughter when she met him, and their daughter together would be five now.
I started up the walk, hoping his wife wasn’t home. Cerise had said she was beautiful.
I could have married him. I knew he’d go to college. We took honors classes together. But he loved Rio Seco, and I couldn’t wait to leave.
Marcus opened the front door and peered at me. “Fantine?” he said, like he missed saying my name, and it killed me. He was holding a shirt twisted like a wet rag in his hands. No hugs, I thought, but when I put out my hand, he said, “Girl, are you crazy?” and pulled me to him.
I knew it. My breasts pressed against his chest. He had a layer of age like an extra soft shirt, a little padding when I put my arms around him, and the feeling inside my hip bones was sharp. I took a step back. The first man who had ever adored me. We came from the same place.
“Hey, expatriate,” he said. “What are you doing here? Victor called you?”
“He left a picture here, a picture of Glorette and some other woman. He said he wanted me to keep it safe. You know what’s wrong with him?”
Before I could answer, he said, “Hey, let me get a new shirt, cause it’s so damn hot.”
He gestured at the wicker furniture on the porch. His back brown, the muscles gleaming when he opened the door and disappeared.
His bare chest moving against mine when we were on the blanket in the eucalyptus windbreak, in the truck bed of my father’s broken-down Apache in the far grove, in the abandoned box house when we finally found a real bed. Fantine, he whispered, over and over. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.
What? I’d said.
I didn’t know you were like this.
He meant he didn’t know I was so beautiful. He meant he didn’t know I was more beautiful than Glorette, there on those nights, when he put his cheek against my neck and said: I didn’t know you were the one.
It shouldn’t have mattered, that he had thought I was the one. I put my hands on my knees and looked at the street. Marcus had wanted me, and I had wanted out. I left a month later for summer orientation back east.
The screen door slammed. He sat down in the other wicker chair and handed me the frame. The photo from Dimples. Glorette staring at me with those white crescent moons under her night-purple eyes. Hattie’s hair shining another moon, silver sickle on her straight bangs. Her wig tonight at the Golden Gopher, glossy and smooth.
“Where’d this come from?” He touched Glorette’s forehead. “There’s dust along the edges. Like he just wiped it clean.”
“Maybe from a museum.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t telling him about Dimples. “What did he say?”
“Kept talking about ‘You were right, I hate this shit, it’s a minstrel show.’ That’s what I tell these kids in class, but they don’t listen.”
“He shouldn’t be riding with them. He wanted to stay with me,” I said, and then I started to shake.
Marcus pulled the chair close to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “He was sweating bullets, wearing a big jacket. Didn’t seem like himself at all. He stayed here a couple times after Glorette got killed. I helped him register for city college. But this time he just asked me for money.”
I put my arms around myself. “Did he say what for?”
Marcus shook his head. “He was tryin to joke with me about Superfly. Only game you know is do or die. I couldn’t figure out why, and then I remembered he knew what your brothers called me back in the day.”
“Sissyfly.” I smiled through my tears.
“That’s still me.” He laughed. “Sissyfly. Gonna make my fortune by and by. Teachin world history and honors econ.” He smiled back. Brown lips, brown cheeks, with a reddish tone like molasses underneath. The Thompsons had Creek Indian in them, from Oklahoma. “Sometimes it still feels weird to be at the school where we used to sit in the same classroom. Remember when we had Spanish with Mr. Nickleby, and he hated all the black kids? Alphonse used to tease him all the time. Say, I speak a foreign language, cuddy, I’m GQ down, got my Staceys on, get me some mantequilla in my six-fo and we finna book out this country-ass place. See, you don’t know what I’m yangin bout.”
He touched my embroidered cuff. “Always GQ down.” He started laughing. “Remember when you were such a jerk after you first got out of college, and I was doing my student teaching? I came by the barn one night to see Lafayette about a car, and you were sorting oranges with your mama and them. You were pissed!”
“I didn’t want to be from a farm.”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to be from a tow yard. But I’m cool with it.” He looked out onto the street. “Victor always told me he was gonna live in LA. But you’re the only one there. And you’re hard to get in touch with.”
Glorette stared at me. Wounded.
“He never asked me for money before, but Saronn’s had the store for two years now, and he’s been there, so maybe he figured I was bankable.” He frowned. “He said whatever I had. Saronn’s still at the store—we had about thirty people tonight for open mic poetry.” Marcus stood up and pulled the front door closed. “I gave him two hundred. He never even got out the car, Fantine. He was in the backseat, with the window open. Like I was a drive-through idiot. Fool drivin—Jazen—I had him sophomore year, and he didn’t even look at me. Didn’t acknowledge my existence.”
I nodded. “We’re old.”
He pulled two fingers down the point of his chin again and again, mimicking what the older guys used to do when they were trying to talk to a girl. “I remember when all the fellas wanted to rap to Sarrat girls.”
“That’s what rap used to mean.” The carob leaves were green coins above us. “You ain’t got no rap—that’s what my brothers used to say to you.”
He spread out his wide palms, like the homeless man had earlier today, when I was at the party downtown looking from the sky into the alley. “They were right. I only ever talked to you.”
That was it. Like all the other boys, he’d wanted Glorette, but then he’d fallen in love with me. The angel trumpets were translucent in the streetlight, like tissue paper. The picture frame was light, and I imagined the paler empty place where it had been. “I’ll keep the picture for him. I’m going to see him tomorrow.”
Marcus said, “Yeah. You here for the day, huh? I still don’t have a rap, but if I did, I guess I could say, All this coulda been yours, baby.” He waved his hand over the porch and house, grinning just a little, no teeth, his mouth curved tight. “But you travel all over the world. All this wouldn’t seem like much if you were used to Rome and London.”
“Looks pretty good to me,” I said, but he thought I was joking, and he held out the same hand to help me up. He said, “It’s good to see you.” His arms went around me, and my face went into the side of his neck—salty and warm and the vein pulsing there. I would have moved into the darker part of the porch with him just like that—my fingers fanned out on his shoulders—but he straightened up and pulled away.
He said quickly, “Hey, can you give me a ride back to the store?”
I said, “No problem.”
Marcus ducked inside the door and came out with a canvas messenger bag swung across his chest—ONE LOVE in Gothic letters on the flap.
We drove back toward Palm. “It’s by the old theater,” he said. I knew exactly where he meant. One night, I took off from Sarrat without telling anyone and walked all the way to the Cinema Paris to see Black Orpheus. No one knew I’d already walked home from LA with Grady Jackson. I had seen five or six worlds by then.
Marcus said, “Is that Esther Phillips?”
“ ‘Don’t count stars, or you might stumble.’ ” I didn’t sing the rest. Someone drops a sigh, and down, down, down you tumble.
Don’t sigh.
He didn’t. He got out a piece of paper and said, “I’ma put my cell number here. Call me when you find him, or if you need anything. Cause I don’t hear from you. Ever.”
I felt my eyes hot. “Marcus,” I said. “It’s not like my life is that amazing.”
“Mine’s cool,” he said, pointing to a store sign that said ONE LOVE. “I’m surrounded by women. I’m just sayin—” He ran his hand down his neck, like men did when they were nervous. “Check it, I love your godson, too.”
Love.
“He’s the real thing, Fantine. He’s one of the smartest kids I’ve ever had. The first essay he ever wrote for my class was hilarious. He said you’d taken him to the Getty Villa. He wrote about this wrestler’s cup. Some kind of stone. The guy’s face was all battered, and that was carved into the stone. He linked it up with Snoop Dog’s pimp cup, with all the jewels, and his grandpa’s coffee mug.” He shook his head. “He could be a great writer or record producer or something. But not ridin with Jazen.”
Before I could say anything else, he opened the door and turned toward the store. A CLOSED sign hung in the door. But in the light Saronn’s face bobbed up and down in the windows near the cash register. Behind her were two girls, and she turned and laughed, throwing her head back.
The big window was framed with purple and green shimmering cloth, and hanging all around were suns—I recognized the Oaxacan suns of blue and gold, and maybe the others were Indian or African. Clothes, jewelry, books in a kaleidoscope behind her. Saronn’s face was round and soft and perfect as a child in a Baroque Spanish painting, with gold leaf for her cheeks, gold hair in the short aura of a natural around her forehead. She wore an Afghan tunic, gold as well, trimmed with beads and embroidery.
It was exactly the kind of store I’d write about if it were in LA, or London, or Luzern. She was exactly the kind of woman I’d love to meet there.
She didn’t see us. She spun gracefully and moved to the back of the store, and the girl who must have been their daughter saw me staring from the car window. Marcus said, “That’s my heart. Sakkara.” Then he blew out a long breath. “Damn—I forgot to give Victor something, cause he was acting so strange.”
He ran to the door and knocked, and Saronn let him in. He bent to kiss her, and her long fingers cradled the back of his head. The heat rushed again between my legs, and I looked away.
He pushed a CD into my window. Superbad! The Soul of the City. The cover featured a brother with sideburns and a natural, bellbottoms and platform shoes, walking past tall buildings. “I got it at the swap meet—one of those cheesy compilations. But Superfly’s on there.” He grinned at me. “Give it to him when you catch him. You headin home, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Goin home.”
“You not hidin any of your white friends back there, are you?” He grinned. “I remember when Chess and Glorette said you brought home this white guy once, and your pops was trippin.”
“He was?” I thought about it. Tony? My father had been perfectly civil to Tony while he was there.
“Hey, your pops and your brothers barely tolerated me the first few times I went out to Sarrat,” he said. “And I could feel it. They don’t play out your way.”
“No, they don’t,” I said. He put his lips on my cheek for a moment, hot and dry as a biscuit held against my skin. “Be good,” he said. “Cause I can tell you’re never bad, in your perfect white shirt.”