“You’re the teacher. It’s your problem if she’s doing other things in class.”
Hazel had taught Mary to read when she was four. She first made Mary memorize their bedtime poem, then taught her to read the words. Since then, they’d spent many afternoons at the park in Charlotte—and even more evenings, Mary with warm milk and Hazel with her spitting cup—immersed in a tale. As a result, Mary was emotionally and academically eons ahead of her age.
“I was going to suggest that Mary take her writing and reading lessons with the second graders.”
“And when she writes and reads better than the second graders, then what?”
“We’ll handle it then.”
“Just like you handled the little ones?” Hazel gestured in the direction of the woods. “Mary ran home alone, in tears. No one cared about her safety. You all watched her go.”
Mabel sighed. “It’s your fault she’s so different from everyone else.”
“Everyone’s different from everyone else, Mabel. My daughter can’t help how she was born.”
“She stands out like a sore thumb, like a spotlight—blinding to all of us.”
“Is that why you’re so mean? She’s a little girl. Knows nothing of the way she came into this world.”
“I didn’t do anything to your precious daughter.”
“You’re right; you did nothing—when it was your job to protect her. My child was scared and confused. Kids asking her about a White man she’d never met, calling her names. I didn’t want to have to tell her anything about him, but thanks to you, I did.”
Mabel didn’t look remorseful enough. Hazel heard herself hiss, “If you don’t make the assaults on my daughter stop, I’ll go door to door and tell everyone about you and the preacher.” Mabel’s back door could be seen from the slit in Hazel’s outhouse, and on more than one occasion, Hazel had seen the preacher—the same man who had once publicly scolded her morality—hitching up his pants and creeping out her door.
“No one would believe you.”
“The Bendses have seen it too.” It was a lie, but Adelaide and Lefred were elders in Cottonwood, and Mabel knew no one would refute their testimony.
“You and that daughter of yours just think you’re better than everyone else.”
Hazel stomped back across the room, one second from physical contact, but instead pointed a finger half an inch from Mabel Wish’s face. “Mary has to sit in the back of the bus, too, you know. She’s a pupil at this school, instead of the shiny White one, cause I’m her momma. She can’t help that. Shame on you.”
* * *
Hazel was washing potatoes later when Mary came skipping through the door. Two girls in her class had broken from the group to walk home with her. Typically, Mary trailed the others, who didn’t want to be seen with a “White girl” in the woods.
Hazel didn’t look up from the sink. “Don’t forget how they treated you before they had to be nice.”
“But they said sorry.”
Hazel picked up a knife and began peeling a potato as she felt the urge to tell her daughter the truth. “I went and talked to your teacher.” Hazel had seen Mary picking flowers during recess that afternoon, at the edge of the school grounds where the wild roses grew. She waited until her back was turned to cross the field to the building.
“Today?” Mary’s eyes sparkled and turned the Atlantic blue they did when she was happy. She wrapped her thin arms around Hazel’s waist. “I knew it! I didn’t see you but I could feel you!”
Hazel, whose hands were still occupied, bent to kiss the top of her head. “I hope you’ll always be able to feel me, baby.”
CHAPTER 6
Elise
Sunday morning, October 29, 2017
The rain started around 3:00 am. Still on the Perch, Elise watched her mother abandon her teacup on the tiny table in the labyrinth’s center in favor of her flat-ironed hair, which she covered with both hands to sprint through the path, up the porch steps, and inside the sliding glass kitchen doors. Elise climbed in then too.
When the rain began to beat and splatter against the windows, Elise changed into her workout clothes, expecting to be able to go to the gym that morning with some privacy. Moisture gave Los Angeles residents, even the celebrity stalkers, pause about commuting outside of necessity. A single accident—likely in a town where perpetual sunshine caused drivers to respond to any degree of rain as if it were hail—could deadlock the entire city. The loss of precious weekend hours to traffic could cause even the meekest Angeleno to lose it.
Beyond that, Elise had worked out at 6:00 am most mornings for years, so the market was oversaturated with pictures of her sweaty style exiting the Tracy Anderson Method studio. Scandal or not, no paparazzi would venture out so early, in the rain, for a photo they couldn’t sell.
And if they did, Elise didn’t care. For the past week, her bedroom had been her gym, and it was an inadequate substitute.
When her sisters woke up to join her, she reminded them about the photographers’ aggression, but they insisted. Relieved they weren’t followed when Andy turned onto the freeway, Elise suggested breakfast on Melrose afterward. “We’ll get there at seven-thirty—hours before the brunch rush.” They’d be fed and gone before the devoted foodies willing to brave the downpour arrived. It was a gamble, but it would make for a good memory, important in a time that felt so wistfully orchestrated.
* * *
Breakfast anywhere but at home was impossible after their workout; the paparazzi now crowding the alley behind the gym would follow them and obliterate everyone’s peace. Fame begot privilege, but you traded it for freedom. The St. John sisters preferred not to subject others to their inconveniences.
Elise stayed behind Andy. Always her first line of defense, the six-foot-six, 320-pound former pro football player was a fortress. He elbowed his way through, using his arms as a barricade against the photographers, but they slung their cameras into the sisters’ faces despite his girth and arm span. Cold air hit Elise’s sweaty back as Noele gripped the back of her T-shirt. Lens shutters snapped like the sound of an annoying toy as they began the twenty-five-foot walk to Andy’s nondescript black Range Rover, parked in the middle of the street. They maintained their composure: heads and eyes down, sunglasses on, unresponsive to the prying chorus desperate for answers:
What happened to Kitty?
How does it feel to be six hundred million dollars richer?
Why did Kitty Karr leave her money to you?
How did she die?
They crowded the car for shots through the windshield and side windows.
“Holy shit.” Noele covered her face with a towel and slid down into the second-row seat behind Elise.
“I told you.”
Giovanni waved to the cameras between the front seats, showcasing her D-cup breasts stuffed into Elise’s B-cup-sized sports bra.
Elise pulled the waistband of her sister’s stretch pants. “Can you not?”
“Dad’s right—everyone has to eat.” Giovanni climbed over the seats into the third row as Andy stuck his middle finger out of the driver’s window. He revved the gas. “Have some respect, assholes! They’re in mourning. All of Hollywood is.” The photographers scattered like ants to follow in their cars.
“You shouldn’t have said that.” Elise met Andy’s brown eyes.
“I’m sick of them,” he said, making a fast left. “Damned parasites. Profiting off others’ pain—it’s not right.”
“They didn’t conceptualize the industry, Andy.”
“It’s fine.” Giovanni spoke up from the back row. “He said ‘all of Hollywood.’”
Elise didn’t bother to turn around. “‘All of Hollywood’ hasn’t become a part of the narrative.”
Rebecca’s call to Elise’s phone sounded through the car’s Bluetooth speakers. Knowing she was calling to bitch about them being photographed, Elise silenced it and texted her: BUSY WITH THE FAM. CALL WHEN OTW.
“Is she coming tonight?” Noele asked.
“Of course.”