Afterward, the girl’s mother came over to me. “My Maddie just loves your little girl,” she said to me, shouldering her bag and getting ready to go.
“They do seem to like each other,” I said. I would let her think I was the too-young mother.
“What is her name?”
“Mary-Emma.”
The woman grew awkward but purposeful, in my experience, a bad combo. “Do you think they could get together for a playdate someday?” the woman asked. “Maddie doesn’t have any African-American friends, and I think it would be good for her to have one.” She smiled.
I was stunned into silence but only for a moment. Suddenly all the Wednesday nights I’d ever overheard distilled themselves into a single ventriloquized sentence: “I’m sorry,” I said to the woman, “but Mary-Emma already has a lot of white friends.”
I didn’t wait to examine the woman’s expression or to mitigate it with softened thoughts. I stood and picked up Mary-Emma, canting my hip and nestling her there. I took her home, wheeling the empty stroller in front of me. She did not swing and kick herself away in order to be put down and run ahead. She was tired.
The idea that Mary-Emma would be used like that — to amuse and educate white children, give them an experience, as if she were a hired clown — enraged me, but walking fiercely and pushing the stroller hard over the sidewalk cracks helped work it off. Back at home in the kitchen we fed the fish little pieces of bread, which they nibbled, and which might not have been the ideal food, especially for Juicy, who died within days, though Steve was tough and hung on, unkillable.
In general in the early afternoons I would feed Mary-Emma lunch, put a clean Pull-Up on her, and tuck her in for a nap. I sang her “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” even though it was about joining people in death and planning the afterlife as a jolly place for friends and loved ones. Would this lead to a preoccupation? Was the grammar off? She stared at me wide-eyed while I sang. “Sing it again,” she said after I had sung all the verses I knew.
“Now you take a nap,” I said, “and have a really sweet dream.” I thought I might bring her dirty clothes downstairs to the laundry room in the basement. Usually I tossed them down the laundry chute, but this time, with little else of immediate concern, I decided perhaps to be helpful and do a load of Mary-Emma’s clothes. Sarah had gone out.
But when I got downstairs to the basement (which was carpeted and where Mary-Emma and I sometimes played on rainy days), I noticed there was a light on in the laundry room. I walked in anyway, and there stood a young woman I’d never seen before. She was pretty in the pale, speckled, toadstool way of redheads: enchanting, possibly poisonous, simultaneously prosaic and exotic. She was busying herself with an iron, touching the hot surface with a licked finger, though it did not yet let out a sizzle.
“Oh, hi!” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you! I’m Tassie.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Liza.” I could see that her immediate task was to seal by ironing the new tea bags filled with Sarah’s own tea.
“I look after Mary-Emma.”
“I help out with the laundry and stuff,” she said. She saw that I was holding some clothes. “Here, let me take these — I do all Emmie’s stuff together with Dreft.”
“Oh, OK,” I said. “You’ll see there’s some signs of—” And then just behind her I saw, at the bottom of a foreshortened door that led to some kind of wine closet or pantry a man’s good brown shoes, and pant cuffs, hiding in the shadows. Research into wine had taken a new form. It was like seeing the shoes of the person Dorothy’s house had landed on in Oz. Witch’s feet under the short door, although these shoes took you anywhere but home. “You’ll see some signs of the park. Grass and dirt.”
“No problem,” she replied.
“Sounds good,” I said, and then I turned and left.
——
“I met Liza,” I said to Sarah upstairs when she came in the back door later that afternoon. “The laundry lady.”
“Oh, good,” said Sarah brightly, setting a bag of groceries down on the counter. “Now you’ve met just about everyone — except the guy who shovels and mows.”
“Noelle doesn’t do that?”
“Noel? No.”
“And not Edward.”
“Uh, nhew, not Edward.” She did not look up but just kept pulling grocery items from her bag. Broccolinis and fresh eggs.
“Mary-Emma’s napping upstairs, so I thought I’d go now.”
“Oh, yes, that’s fine. Can you come on Friday, by any chance?”
I flew home on my Suzuki. There was a final exam in Soundtracks to War Movies, and though I’d listened to Platoon’s Adagio for Strings night and day, I still hadn’t watched The Best Years of Our Lives, which was required, and which I finally did, under a blanket on the couch. I loved the guy with the hook hands. They didn’t give men hooks anymore. Everything was plastic and digital and disguised. A proper pirate was no longer possible. Hook hands would be useful for playing bass, or for high shelves at home, or for toenail cleaning, and if he, your man, your hook-hand husband, scratched his head with one, no thought he came up with could possibly be dismissable or dumb. Love should be helpful. Love should contribute something.
On Friday Sarah tried again to tell me her secret. The secret of Susan. Susan’s secret. Once again she sat me down with more sauvignon blanc while Mary-Emma was napping.
She began by talking about hair, which lessened my foreboding. “I’m still getting criticized for Emmie’s hair.”
“People don’t like her afro,” I said knowingly.
“Ha! You’ve been informed. Yes. They feel it should be grown long and then braided, even on a child. I guess they feel that she is Rapunzel and will need that hair to escape me, the witch who has adopted her and wants to cut it off.”
“No one could think that.”
“We’ve been confronted with a difficult situation of our own doing,” she said. She poured more SB. “This is very briary,” she said, “this wine.”
“Briary. Yes.” I would have to remember that for the final.
And then she began her story. Or began it again.
They were driving in a car along the turnpike, John, Susan, this new mysterious child, their son, Gabriel, with the name of an angel but obstreperous and four years old, in the backseat. He wanted ice cream now and wailed for it. “Quiet, kiddo,” said John in the front, a little heatedly. But Gabriel began to lean forward in his carseat and plunked John on the head with his fist and grabbed his flipped and capey hair. John shouted in pain.
“Stop that, Gabriel,” said Susan, whoever Susan was. “You’ll cause an accident.” She was caught between these two male energies, one grown and one growing and unformed like a fire. Still, the grown one looked ablaze himself, with the quick sparky burn of an electrical accident. One must let the males of the species have their go at each other, she had once been told. Who had that been? Who had said that?
“No!” shouted Gabriel, and John turned while driving and swatted the child on his knee.