Her sisters whispered about this behind her back. Giovanni spoke for them both. “What does she think we should do about Kitty?”
“I don’t know,” Elise said. “I haven’t asked, and she hasn’t said.”
“She would know how to handle it,” Noele said.
“I doubt that. She hasn’t once mentioned the inheritance.” Elise knew Rebecca was avoiding talking about the racist invective that had erupted online—which, shamefully, she let her get away with.
“Are you guys still fighting?” Giovanni asked.
“We’re not fighting; we fundamentally disagreed.”
“I’m sure that for her, learning you had opinions about Black Lives Matter was shocking.”
“Sadly.”
Aaron’s call came through the speakers next; she silenced it too. A text illuminated her screen in the same second: WYD?
“Who said we’re not to comment on Kitty?” Giovanni said.
“Mom decided. Okay? Mom.” Elise tapped Andy to ask him to turn up the radio.
Giovanni’s voice rose above it. “I thought you didn’t talk to her about it?”
Elise hit Andy on the arm. “Louder, please.”
“Take it easy,” he mumbled, before passing a small joint and lighter over his shoulder to her. Elise tapped him twice to say thank you as he sped onto the freeway on-ramp.
She rolled down the window and lit the joint as they picked up speed for a few minutes before slowing again in traffic. Her exhalation matched the gray morning. Paparazzi were still trailing them, but driving slower than normal in the rain. She didn’t care if they got a picture. Aaron, of course, very much did; she scanned the paragraph he’d written about her selfishness in leaving her parents’ house. Elise hid his alerts and scanned her playlists.
Cloudy days made Elise imagine they were all caricatures in a snow globe, being overturned and peered at as the elements of their world settled. The thought of something bigger, of a greater plan, comforted her, and with it, some of her grief lifted. The whisking of tires down the slick freeway, the smacking of sheeted rain on car windows, and Tupac—“How Long Will They Mourn Me?” started the week’s playlist—created a symphony that put her into a meditative state.
The past year had made this practice—workouts, playlists, and weed—routine. Sanctioned by the two people she spent the most time with, Andy and Rebecca, it kept her sane despite fame’s accomplice, the paparazzi, on nearly twenty-four-hour surveillance that simultaneously isolated and exploited her.
Music was both a distraction and mood boost, and when she combined it with a workout, she was able to zone out. It was in that state, all sweaty and strong, that she had found the courage to share a real opinion on her public platform. She needed some of that courage now. Hearing her sisters’ whispers again, she turned. “What?”
“I didn’t know you smoked.” Noele was always ready for an interrogation.
“Why? You don’t?” Elise asked.
“I do. I just didn’t know you did.” Noele had to be the authority on everything.
“It’s too early to be high.” Giovanni’s voice peaked on the end of the sentence, and her freckled nose scrunched with disapproval.
“Why? I’m off until Friday.” Elise knew Giovanni hadn’t forgotten about her shoot. A Vogue cover was one of her dreams too.
“Nothing prior to?”
“No, I gave them exclusivity.”
“Before or after Kitty?” Giovanni sounded drier.
“Before,” Elise said. Not expecting congratulations, Elise relit the joint and put her feet up in the seat, leaning her body against the door. Her hair flew out of the open window, drying and growing in volume with each second. Andy hit the car’s door locks.
She passed the joint to Noele, who held it, ripping open a bag of trail mix with her teeth. “So you’re not going to talk about her?”
“No.”
“Have they asked?” Giovanni rubbed a wipe over her face before tossing the plastic package over the seat to Elise.
Elise lied. “I don’t know.”
Andy accelerated up the driveway to the estate. Midway to the house was a row of catering and party rental vans parked in the grass.
“How many people are coming to Kitty’s memorial?” Noele fought against a cough as she handed the joint back to Elise.
“Was supposed to be twenty-five,” Elise said.
“Mom said seventy-three. I’m surprised Kitty had twenty-five people to invite,” Giovanni said, in defense of their mother’s logic. She reached over Noele for the joint from Elise, who passed it, declining to remind her sister of how “early” it still was.
“Kitty knew half the world,” Elise said. “She just didn’t see them a lot.”
“So, old people.”
“It’s not a party,” Elise reasoned, suddenly worried that the vans weren’t for Kitty’s memorial.
“Isn’t the memorial at Kitty’s house? Why are the vans here?” Noele asked.
“Bet Mom didn’t cancel her birthday party,” Giovanni said. She finished the joint and tossed it through the window onto the pavement.
Elise threw her a look of annoyance as they climbed out of the car. “Halloween isn’t even her real birthday.” Sarah had been born in September, like Kitty, but she claimed Halloween after moving into the Bel Air house because it was her favorite holiday and the new house was a “dream” to decorate.
Elise had long suspected that her mother’s affinity for celebrations had little to do with sentimentalities and was, rather, an urgent need for distraction. When they were younger, she’d sometimes throw a party simply because it was a Tuesday.
CHAPTER 7
Mary
August 1946
The COLOREDS ONLY signs were always smaller than the WHITES ONLY signs. They were always older, dirtier, as if they’d been hanging for centuries, as opposed to the WHITES ONLY signs that always looked new, despite being printed or handwritten.
Mary stood pin straight in the bus aisle, looking up at the COLOREDS ONLY sign that swung by a rusty, bent wire above her head. She planted her feet, bracing herself, as the driver took yet another turn too fast. Her momma’s hand was heavy and hot on her right shoulder, pulling her in close to ensure that not even her head crossed the line marked in the air. She eyed the WHITES ONLY sign neatly bolted in all four corners at the front of the bus.
The White section was empty except for a young woman, her fussy baby, and her husband, who had moved to the first row to talk to the bus driver. His legs were stretched across the aisle, feet up in the empty seat.
Besides their conversation and the baby, the bus was silent, despite the crowding in the back. That’s how Negroes behaved in public spaces, even when their bodies often dominated it. More Negroes rode the bus than Whites, because many Whites had at least one car. The bus was unusually crowded that Sunday—besides the bumpy two-hour ride to Charlotte, most Negroes didn’t want to spend their only day off around White folks who rode public transportation for leisure on the weekends—but it was late August, and the start of school made the trip imperative for some.
Mary was half-Negro and half-White—like the bus, like the world. She used to look for the delineating line, imagining one hidden somewhere, drawn with chalk. For whenever she left Cottonwood, she encountered Jim Crow.
“He’s their superhero. Gives them power over us, lets them get their way. If they didn’t have him, they’d have to do their own work—really try.”
“So worried about making sure we don’t step an inch over the line. A lot of ’em near as poor as us.”
“And lazy.”
Behind closed doors, Hazel and Adelaide talked about White folks like dogs. Everyone did.
Without Bessie as a buffer between her and Mrs. Lakes, Hazel was bothered by her idle time.
“I pray every day for the blindness to be removed from their eyes. I get so mad sometimes, I want to stab it out!” Except for work, Adelaide never left Cottonwood anymore, to avoid interaction with Whites.
The women howled, ignoring Lefred’s warnings that they’d wake Mary, who always fell asleep after dinner on the Bendses’ living-room couch.