Mary stood to see her exiting the car. The five other passengers in the car were asleep. The woman returned just before daylight and gave Mary a quick nod of acknowledgment before sinking into her seat, exhausted from her excursions beyond first class.
Mary became her de facto lookout every night. She wanted to ask where she went, but they never spoke again, knowing better. Someone else could have been awake.
* * *
Mary saw Lillian the moment the train rolled into the station, waving wildly from the platform as if she knew everyone on it. She was dressed in the same outfit from the picture Hazel had showed her and she ran down the platform steps, blocking the exit to embrace Mary. “It’s so good to see you again.” She smelled like a strawberry hard candy.
“You too.” Mary pulled from her embrace, feeling the patience of those behind them waning. A few pushed past. “Excuse me,” they said, shaking their heads at the inconsideration.
Lillian didn’t seem to notice or care, but Mary, mindful of her Southern manners, tried to steer Lillian to the left. Her feet didn’t budge, but she did release her grip around Mary’s waist.
“I have missed you.” She wore a center part, as she had as a child. In line with her tooth gap, it brought some symmetry to her round face. Seeing her now after almost five years, Mary understood what her mother had meant by “a lot of face.” Her chubby cheeks made her features look like chocolate chips nestled in a cookie.
“Me too.” Mary looked down, uncomfortable with Lillian’s gaze on her brown shift dress. She fumbled with an earlobe, realizing she still had on her mother’s earrings. She felt out of place in front of Lillian, whose curled hair, red-painted lips, and nails matched the magazine styles. She dropped Lillian’s hand and picked up her suitcase, squeezing the handle to settle herself.
Lillian took it as a cue and started up the stairs. “Isn’t the train ride majestic?”
“I slept most of the way.”
“That’s a shame.” Lillian pivoted on the stairs, slowing the line again. “Who knows when you’ll make that trip again?” She walked on her toes, bouncing like a child unburdened by the world. Her deep brown hair swung from side to side, shining in the sun. “Seeing the land and the trees—oh, I just loved it.”
Mary struggled to keep up. “I’ll try not to sleep as much on the way back.”
Lillian navigated through the crowd, expecting people to move for her; most did. If they didn’t do so fast enough, she turned her shoulders to slide through. Mary stayed at her heels, excusing them both, careful not to bump into any of the Whites.
In the parking lot, Lillian tossed Mary’s suitcase in the back seat of a silver Buick convertible.
“This is your car?”
Lillian beamed as if it was the first time someone had noticed. She slapped the hood with a flat palm. “I’ve been saving for a year. Early birthday present.” She’d be twenty-one in August.
Mary slid into the passenger’s seat, running her palm over the white leather. “It’s beautiful.”
Lillian started the engine. “We’ll go home first to change, and then we’re going out.”
“I don’t have anything to wear.” The wrinkles in Mary’s dress were so deep they looked like stains.
“Don’t worry. I have clothes for you at the house. None of my old things worked here either.”
Mary found that hard to believe.
Lillian rolled down the windows, turned up the radio, and began singing along with Ray Charles. “I got a woman, way over town, that’s good to me.” She was off-key and too loud, which garnered the attention of others in the lot.
Mary was embarrassed until she saw them smiling. Lillian’s unburdened nature was a rarity at home, where women—both White and Negro—were reared to be reserved. She realized she’d missed it a little.
Among the stream of pedestrians leaving the train station was the woman in the black dress. Mary watched her cross to the bus stop, where a Negro man handed her a baby.
Mary touched Lillian’s forearm and motioned her to look. “She was passing on the train.”
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes, but I’m alone.”
Lillian stared, summing up the situation. “I bet it was hot in the Colored car. Or maybe she’s White.”
“No, she was passing. She told me.”
“No use in everyone being uncomfortable, especially if she’s still feeding.”
Mary wondered what her and Richard’s baby might look like. Would they have to travel separately? Would she have to sneak to the Colored train car at night to feed her baby?
“What would have happened had she been caught?” Mary asked. It wasn’t illegal after the Mason-Dixon Line, but it would have angered passengers and train personnel, who had jurisdiction out in the middle of nowhere.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Lillian said. She turned up the radio and cruised onto the street.
Los Angeles was a maze of roads lined with buildings, bigger than any in Charlotte. The palm trees were as tall as she’d heard, but ugly, with rail-thin trunks and sparse tops of green, beige, and brown leaves. She preferred the substantial oaks and maples at home.
Mary wiggled her fingers through the wind as Lillian picked up speed. It was sunny and hot, but not sticky like at home. White people walking down the street wore sharp suits and long dresses. The few Negroes in the flow of foot traffic were dressed as nicely, if not better, in hats and heels. Mary couldn’t wait to tell Richard about it. She had started a letter on the train, but the forward motion of the train combined with the left-to-right motion of her eyes and hand had made her queasy.
Lillian announced their arrival to her home on Orange Drive, a wide, paved street with single-story houses and green manicured lawns. If this was how Negroes lived in Los Angeles, Mary might never leave.
“I’m only a ten-minute walk to work.”
“My momma said you work at a film studio?”
“Telescope. Smaller studio, but very well respected.”
“And they hire us?”
“I’m a phone operator.”
Mary tried not to show her disappointment. She had hoped for something more glamorous—if not an actress, a secretary at least. Lillian noticed and defended herself. “Anything pays better than a service job.”
Mary couldn’t argue. “I’m going to be a teacher.” Thinking of Catherine then, she turned down the radio. “How’s your momma?”
Lillian swatted her hand and turned it back up. “Fine.”
“You really came out here all alone?”
“She didn’t want to come.”
They parked in front of a quad of pale-pink houses. Four stairs led up to the property, enclosed by a rectangular partition of bushes. Lillian pointed to the right. “I’m the first one. Eighty-Eight Orange Drive.”
The porch was shaded by ivy vines sprouting from the iron awning mounted into the cement. The vines hung long and thick, obstructing the view of most of the porch and the entire front door from the street.
The living room was dominated by books. Thick novels, magazines, and crinkled, yellowing newspapers adorned every surface: the shiny hardwood floor, the green couch, the two matching chairs, the fireplace mantel, and the coffee table. Most amazing was that the room didn’t look cluttered. It was twice the size of Mary’s entire house in Winston. “Wow.”
“I love to read,” Lillian explained.
“Me too,” Mary said, pretending to have been reacting to her collection.
“Borrow anything you’d like.”
Old questions about Lillian’s life outside of their Sundays in Charlotte swirled in Mary’s head as Lillian led her through the three-bedroom, one-bathroom house, with its custom cabinetry and intricate wall and floor tiling in the kitchen and bathroom. How did she have all this?
Lillian opened one of three doors accessible from the hallway. “This is your room.” Everything was white, and the window had a view of the courtyard, where a black iron table and four chairs sat in the grass. Lillian tied back the curtains. “I sit out there sometimes. It’s peaceful.”
“Are your neighbors nice?” Mary asked. At least one window of each bungalow faced the courtyard.
“Nice enough. I don’t associate too much. Being the landlord, I don’t want to make friends.”
“You own all of this?”
Lillian nodded.
“How?”