Gladys came out of the house, followed by her father. Anita was the only one of the other girls who had ever seen him, and as he walked down to the gate she could see that he was weaker and weighed less than she remembered. At the gate he took his daughter in his arms and kissed her cheek twice, then twice more. The woman he lived with stood in the doorway, her arms crossed and a sweater around her shoulders.
Glady’s father was saying something to her that the two girls could not hear, then, after a few moments, his daughter told him they had to go.
“You call me now, you hear?” her father said. Gladys nodded, but Anita could see that the nod had no truth in it.
Cassandra had to go get Melanie, who was talking under a street lamp with a boy who was standing extremely close to her.
“We goin in the next gotdamn second,” Cassandra said, “with or without you, Miss Engaged.”
“Whew,” Melanie said after everyone was in the car, “I’m glad you got me outta there. The singin was nice and he was cute, but he had the worse breath I ever smelled.”
Gladys was looking back at her father, who stood holding the gate with one hand and waving with the other.
“Must be all them cows and chickens they live with, huh, Choir Girl?” Cassandra said to Anita.
“I don’t know, Cassandra,” Anita said. “But I do know that my name ain’t Choir Girl.”
“Ohhh. Ohh,” Cassandra said. “Excuse me very very much.”
“I felt like slappin that little bitch into next week,” Gladys said. Though they were many blocks from her father, she continued looking back. “The whole time I was standin there I kept askin myself: What does this little bitch have that my mother doesn’t have? And she was treatin my father like he didn’t have a brain in his body. ‘Honey, you chilly? Honey, you wanna put on your sweater? Honey, give her some money fore she go. Honey, make sure you give her our phone number….’” She spewed out the words, as if it were a matter of talking or exploding.
“What we need is a party,” Melanie said. “Help pick us up.”
“Thas what you always seem to need,” Cassandra said.
Melanie ignored her and turned around in the seat to speak to Anita and Gladys. “This guy told me about a party on F Street in Northeast.” She looked out her window to see where they were. “Twelve oh nine F Street.”
“Nine one two,” Cassandra said.
“What?” Melanie said.
“You sure he didn’t say nine one two F Street? Or nine oh one two? One two nine F Street? Or maybe E Street, or C Street?” Cassandra said. “You flicted bitch, you tryin to get us lost, looking for some damn party.”
Melanie deflated and sat back in her seat.
“Why not?” Gladys said. “Why don’t we see if it was twelve oh nine, Cassandra. We ain’t got nothin else better to do. Besides, we still drivin on gas my mother paid for.”
“Sure, why not?” Anita said.
Melanie perked up and Cassandra shrugged her shoulders, saying, “If we get lost, it ain’t my damn fault.” She patted the dashboard for good luck and turned off 8th Southeast onto C Street. But they had no sooner crossed East Capitol when Cassandra began to feel the car hesitate, and just beyond D Street it stopped after Cassandra managed to pull it to the curb. She got out, rocked the trunk a few seconds, and cursed it in a voice passersby could not hear. She was in a different country, and she thought the laws might not be the same for her here.
It was a fairly quiet street, with a few older people sitting on their porches and children playing on either side of the street. Most of the noise was coming from a house across the street where there seemed to be a party going on. A hi-fi was bouncing noise off houses. In front of the house with the hi-fi, a fellow was under the hood of a car and a small boy was beside him shining two flashlights into the maw. The fellow came out of the car, wiped his hands on a rag he pulled from his back pocket. He looked at Cassandra and her car as if deciding what to do, and then came toward her, looking back once or twice to the little boy. He was an awesomely muscled young man no more than eighteen. The muscles looked even more dramatic as the street lamp behind first silhouetted him, then gave way to the brightness of a street lamp on Cassandra’s side of the street.
“Look like you got trouble,” he said to Cassandra, who had opened the hood with Anita’s help. He smelled like the world of dirt and oily metal and rubber Cassandra found under the hoods of all cars. The small boy had followed the guy, but he seemed interested only in shining the flashlights up and down the street, first on this house, then another.
The hi-fi music had pulled Melanie out of the car toward the house, and Gladys followed her.
“I’m Wesley,” the guy said to Cassandra. “You want me to see what I can do with it?” He was country, stone Bama.
“Oh, no. Not really. We just waitin for the midnight train to come by.”
“What?” Wesley said. He had a funny booklike jaw, square and unreal, and Cassandra had the urge to stroke it.
“She means we’d appreciate any help you can give us,” Anita said.
The little boy stepped confidently up to the car and shone the flashlights under the hood. Wesley bent down into the car. Anita followed Melanie and Gladys into the house. Several times Wesley went back across the street to get tools, and Cassandra tried not to let him or the boy or the people on their porches see how much pleasure it gave her to see him walk. He had a very tiny behind that she felt she could cup in both her hands. He seemed entirely comfortable with himself, but was far from being a showoff, and this made him even more endearing. Is this me? she asked herself as she watched him walk. She wanted to believe that the muscles were the result of a life of hard work, not a life in a gym with dozens of other men and tons of dumbbells. “I’ll hold them,” she said to the little boy after a time and took the flashlights. The boy resisted until Wesley told him it was all right. Cassandra leaned into the car beside Wesley and made certain their thighs were touching.
Before long, Wesley had the car running again, and Cassandra cursed it silently.
“It’ll take you home, lady,” Wesley said, “but I wouldn’t trust it after that. A beautiful thing if you take care of it.”
“What do I owe you, Mississippi?” Cassandra said, handing the flashlights back to the boy. “I hope it ain’t much, cause I’m just a poor widow woman.”
Wesley raised his eyebrows, then shook his head, no charge. “No one in this city talks straight, do they?” he said. “You live round here?” The little boy had stepped into the street and was again shining the lights about the houses.
“No. I live in Northwest. Across town. That straight enough for you?”
He nodded. “Bob, get out the street.” And to Cassandra, “Thas my cousin. I live with him and his family over there”—he pointed to the hosue with the music—“my uncle and everybody. Came up from South Carolina to learn some things.” The boy, after a few moments, got in the back seat of Cassandra’s car and at first pretended to fall asleep, then he climbed over the front seat and sat behind the wheel. “You go to movies, lady? Go to picture shows?”
“Every one I can,” Cassandra said.
He took a pencil and piece of paper from his back pocket. “Well, if you give me your phone number, I’ll call you sooner than you can say your name. If you don’t mind. If your people don’t mind.”
As she wrote her sister’s telephone number down, there was a scream from the house with the music. When Cassandra and Wesley reached the porch, Melanie, crying, was coming out of the house with her blouse torn, Anita and Gladys on either side of her.