Rose closed her door behind us and said, “So. Want to play Chinese checkers?”
“Why didn’t you tell me she’s white?”
“Why should I?”
“I told you about my mother.”
“What about her?”
“You said she’s not white.”
“She got a year-round tan, that don’t count for coloured.”
“You said it did the other night.”
“Yeah, well that’s a moot point, isn’t it, considering how you come out.”
“I can’t win, can I?”
“Oh yes you can, there ain’t nothin stoppin you, girl.”
“You hate me ’cause I’m white.”
“I hate you ’cause you’re so fuckin ignorant.”
“Then enlighten me.”
“Why should I bother?”
“Because I’m your friend.”
“Friends don’t spy.”
“I’m sorry. You give me no alternative.”
“There’s an alternative. Leave me alone.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I like you.”
“Why?”
“You’re the smartest person I know, except for my father.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“And you’re beautiful.”
That shut her up. She looked at me as though I’d told her she had a year to live. So I added, “But your mother dresses you funny.”
“It doesn’t matter what I wear.”
“You’re right, you’re so gorgeous it doesn’t matter.”
“Shutup.”
“Come to Mecca with me tonight.”
“I told you I can’t.”
“Do you do everything your mother tells you?”
She sat down on the bed, folded her hands in her lap and quoted scripture, “She has my best interests in mind.”
“Oh really? What are those?”
“Getting out of this dump.”
I sat down next to her, I tried to be delicate. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. She does her best.”
“You’re the one who’s ashamed.”
Rose got quiet and looked at me as though she were holding a puppy and begging me not to hurt it. “You think, because she lives here, she’s not a fine person. Well it’s only because of me that she has to live here. Do you know what that’s like for her? They treat her like trash, they don’t know anything about her. Ignorant niggers.”
I couldn’t speak. Rose went on, “She’s given up everything for my sake.”
“She seems pretty satisfied to me.”
“She’s too polite to seem otherwise.”
“I didn’t think she was the slightest bit polite.”
Rose really looked bewildered. How can she know so much about so many things yet know so little about her own mother? But I just said, “Where’s your hat?”
I followed her out across the parlour and past the kitchen, where Jeanne was setting the table. That is, she was standing there with a fork in her hand, staring into space. Rose took me into Jeanne’s bedroom — I should say boudoir. A mess of satin sheets in a huge mahogany bedstead with claw feet. A big oil painting over the bed of a fat white woman getting out of a tub. A vanity littered with silver brushes, pots of paint and clumps of yellow hair — a crystal cocktail glass with lipstick smears, an ashtray crammed with red-tipped butts, a jumble of jewellery, tweezers and an eyelash curler. Clothes strewn everywhere, and too many smells for one room. Rose opened a big wardrobe, rummaged through the top shelf and pulled down the charcoal fedora.
“Rosie!”
It was Jeanne from the kitchen. She sounded like she’d just hurt herself. Rose whipped the hat back onto the shelf and shot from the room. I got it down again and put it on, and went back out to the parlour. Rose’s back was to me. But Jeanne was looking straight at me from the sofa where she lay. She looked like she was in pain, but somehow still slightly amused to see me in the hat. It gave me the creeps. Rose was reaching into her school-bag. I could see the sheet music inside. She brought out a needle that she filled from a tiny bottle. Jeanne had her left arm flung out and she was pumping her fist. The vigour of that action didn’t go with the swoon in her body. Her face was starting to tighten and go even paler, she was looking at the ceiling now. Rose injected her and Jeanne closed her eyes as though she were lost in prayer like the nuns. Her fist relaxed, she gave a little moan, reached up and stroked Rose’s face. She murmured something then nodded off. Rose folded Jeanne’s arm across her stomach, stood up and saw me.
“She suffers a lot of pain.”
I felt embarrassed for Rose having to lie again.
“Did she see you in the hat?” she asked me.
“I think so.”
“Please don’t do that again. It upsets her.”
“I’m sorry.” I handed her the hat. “Do you have a picture of him?” I asked.
“No.”
“Don’t you have anything besides his hat?”
Rose looked at her mother on the sofa — out cold — and led me back into the boudoir. And disappeared into the wardrobe. I had this crazy idea that she might be gone for ever into another time and place. But she came out a moment later with a suit of men’s clothes on a hanger.
Black and tan pin-stripe trousers. Black waistcoat and tails. Tan cravat with black polka-dots. Starched white shirt with diamond studs.
“Goes with the hat,” I said.
And she said, “Yeah.”
And I said, “Try it on.”
She didn’t pretend to be shocked, which is how I know that in her heart of hearts it had occurred to her before. It’s also how I knew that certain things between us were behind us now. Thank goodness. She just said, “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It would be like — sacrilege.”
“He wasn’t God, he was just some fella.”
“He was my father!”
“And all he left you were his clothes.”
She hesitated. So I started to undress.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know, I just pulled my dress over my head and got to work on my stockings and for some reason it worked, and she said, “All right, all right.” And I put my dress back on as she undid the millions of buttons on hers and said, “Turn around.”
I obliged. She took for ever.
“Don’t peek!”
“I’m not peeking.”
Finally she said, “Okay. You can look now.”
I turned around. Oh my.
She is a tall slim young man in a curious suit of black and tan. There is nothing to beat her leaning against the bricks of any building ’twixt here and Battery Park.
She said, “How do I look?”
“You’re coming out with me.”
“I —”
“Look at yourself.”
She hesitated so I closed the closet door to expose the full-length mirror on the outside. I stood behind her as she looked at the beautiful young man with the fine-cut face between hat and cravat. She looked at herself for a long time. And finally — “Do you think …?”
“Oh yeah.”
She nodded to herself and turned sideways.
I said, “Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. Much less your mother’s friends.”
“Do you have any money on you?”