Charlotte was the only place Mary and Lillian’s friendship existed, and they bonded, each being the only other person either knew whose mother encouraged such a game of make-believe. But that was where their similarities stopped.
Lillian moved in the White world as if she belonged in it. Sometimes it felt as though she went out of her way to forget her manners. She interrupted adults, bumped into them, didn’t say please or thank you. She even called the waiters in the café by the first names on their uniforms. At first, Mary rebuked Lillian’s behavior, until she realized no one else admonished her. Maybe manners were just Colored rules.
“You only follow rules because someone told you to,” Lillian said as they walked into the park a few Sundays later. “So, pretend no one told you.”
Lillian never seemed to consider reality. “I don’t want to get in trouble,” Mary protested.
“You can’t. No one will know if they don’t find out.”
“What?” Mary rubbed her forehead. Lillian was always reasoning in circles around her. Even though she was three years older, she was the only friend close to being Mary’s intellectual match. Mary thought Lillian was smarter because she could read, write, and speak in three languages. But on this count, Lillian was wrong. She acted like it was her right not to be what the world said she was. “No, I mean trouble trouble.”
“Oh, like with White people?”
Mary rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
“They’re easy, because they don’t want to see.” Lillian tried to coach her. “Let’s play a game.” Lillian covered Mary’s eyes. “As ever fine and good and lovely as you can imagine a world, hold on to that dream, open your eyes, and pretend that’s what you see.” Mary’s eyes opened, and Lillian lightly pushed her in the direction of a group of four older girls smoking cigarettes. “Go get me a cigarette.” The group were on a blanket, shuffling through magazines. Their laughter sliced through the breeze, and Mary’s hair whipped across her face as she shook her head to say no.
“Stop being a scaredy-cat.” Lillian gestured around the grassy field. “There aren’t any Negroes anywhere, so we’re free.”
“What if they’re mean?” Mary wasn’t just timid because they were White; she wouldn’t have asked a group of Negro teenagers either. Teenagers were mean. “And you’re not supposed to be smoking anyway.”
“It’s not about the cigarette; I’m trying to help you!”
“Help me with what?”
“You have to feel like you belong somewhere, Mary.”
Mary felt like she belonged with her mother. “I don’t want to.”
“Fine.” Lillian’s head cocked to one side as she constructed a new plan. “You’re going to do all the talking when we’re in town.”
“Fine!”
Lillian laughed at her stubbornness. “I love you, little friend.”
Mary, relieved Lillian still liked her after her refusal, smiled as she rarely did, with teeth.
From then on, Mary was required to order for them, ask for directions, and get assistance. To Lillian’s chagrin, Mary’s manners stayed fully intact, but she occasionally attempted to please Lillian by interrupting the conversation of adults with an “Excuse me.”
Lillian was indifferent to Mary’s bold attempt.
* * *
Lillian had the best of everything, and Mary never saw her wear the same thing twice. Her clothes and hair ribbons were from France, and she and her mother spoke French between themselves. Hazel griped about how rude it was and mocked them with Adelaide.
Assuming Catherine was also a maid (Mary didn’t know any Negro women who weren’t in service), she wondered how they afforded the things they did.
“My mother is a governess for a family in Asheville,” Lillian explained when Mary finally asked.
Mary was impressed. Governesses had a higher level of skill in the languages, ancient history, and cultural customs than teachers, and education received at institutions from which Negroes were prohibited.
“My grandmother was too. She was born free and passed—”
“Died?”
“She’s dead now, but no—I mean she just up and left one day, went to go live as a White person.”
Mary’s eyes got big. “Forever?”
“Yes, many people in my family have.” Lillian shrugged. “Guess learning to fit in is in my bones.”
But Mrs. Catherine couldn’t “pass,” Mary thought. “My grandparents on my Negro side were sharecroppers, and their parents were slaves.”
Lillian didn’t comment. She prided herself on her family’s upper-class history and was embarrassed by Mary’s mention of her Blacker roots and the grim histories they unearthed.
Having only ever been aware of the differences between the way White and Negro people lived, Mary had never considered how her and her mother’s lives may have differed from those of other Negroes. Mary had the necessities, but extras, despite Hazel’s long hours, were always out of the question. Some Negro children lived in houses with two parents, like the ones in the movies, and they were the girls who took dance and music classes. And learned French. Maybe Lillian was one of those girls.
As curious as she was, Mary didn’t ask any questions about that. It was rude to inquire about the things people didn’t volunteer, so Lillian never mentioned her father, and Mary never mentioned hers.
Their conversation, like their Sundays, was rooted in fantastical tradition. They spent most afternoons in the movie theater. It was the coolest place in the summer and the warmest in winter. Hazel and Catherine joined them sometimes, watching from the back of the orchestra, both preferring it to the balcony.
The girls idolized the movie stars, with their blushed cheeks and silky hair. The films inspired chronicles about their futures as housewives, living next door to each other with maids of their own and six kids between them who were Boy Scouts and took ballet and swimming classes together. Their banker husbands would drive into the city together every day and watch football on Sundays. They volleyed stories back and forth each week, one picking up where the other left off.
When Mary was twelve, Hazel started doing two overnight shifts a week at the Lakeses’.
To busy herself while home alone, Mary acted out her stories. They helped to distract her from the violence that often trampled her fairy tales: someone’s uncle, husband, or son was lynched; a cousin left town in the trunk of a car; someone’s windows were smashed in; someone’s daughter or wife was raped.
Lillian refused to talk about these things. She either changed the subject or ignored Mary altogether, leaving her to process the brutality internally, fear etched into her psyche. Mary began to understand that Lillian’s lightness came from her ability to ignore things; that’s how she knew White people could do it too.
When Lillian started menstruating two years ago, Catherine let her start wearing perfume and lipstick and curling her hair. “I told Catherine she might as well dangle her from a string,” Hazel said.
All of Lillian’s conversation started to center around marriage and babies instead of music and school. She had names chosen already for her future children—Jillian and Jackson—and the family dog, Max. Mary got a little bored with these stories and started writing out her own and reading them to Lillian.
When Mary started her cycle only months into her twelfth year, Hazel forbade anything to change, even to let Mary wear her long hair down.
“You want me to be ugly!”
“I don’t want you saddled too young with babies.” Knowing where this conversation could lead, Mary went back to her homework. Adelaide was best suited to endure her mother’s burgeoning rants, especially after Hazel drank too much whiskey. Hazel didn’t drink often, but when she did, she said things one’s child should never have to hear. Mary was pretending to be asleep on the couch one night like always when Hazel’s emotions got the best of her, and she was forced to listen past wanting to.
Hazel got low sometimes, and only Adelaide knew the depths. Sometimes, Hazel said she was “teetering.”
It was a word Adelaide didn’t like to hear. “You stop that talk. No one’s ever going to hurt you again.”
“Or love me, either, huh?”
* * *