Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?

Lillian woke Mary sometime later.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Mary said, raising her head from her pillow.

“You can write letters. We have a post office box down on Third Street. My momma writes me a few times a year.”

Mary buried her face in the covers. It hurt too much to admit that her mother didn’t want to hear from her. “I want to talk to her, see her.”

“We can’t have everything we want in life, Kitty. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

Mary’s entire life had been a series of nonnegotiables. “Don’t call me that. My name is Mary.”

Lillian sat on the edge of the bed. “They planned for this. Your mother saved almost everything she made to send us out here. She sent me money until I got a job.”

Mary understood now: every Sunday in Charlotte, while the girls visited, their mothers had plotted their futures.

Like her answered prayers for her daughter’s White appearance, meeting Catherine and Lillian had been a godsend to Hazel. From the day Mary was born, Hazel had been grooming her to pass for White, but she was apprehensive about sending her to the other side alone. Hazel had seen Catherine and Lillian before and jumped at the chance for the girls to meet that day in Ivey’s.

Mary’s entire life had been lived in preparation for this, a dress rehearsal. Their trips to Charlotte were meant for Mary to gain comfort in the White world and, once Hazel met Catherine, for the girls to bond as closely as sisters. The mothers had made a pact to send their daughters out into the world together, and they would be each other’s support as they dealt with the pain of losing their only children.

“My mother lives in Winston with yours now.” The day Mary left for Los Angeles, Catherine had arrived from Asheville.

“When did you move here?” Mary asked.

“Three years ago.”

“But why Los Angeles? Do you know anyone here?”

“No, but it’s the farthest I could get from my family. The weather is a bonus.”

Mary questioned the necessity of crossing over—different from passing, which allowed a person to slide back and forth over the color line when able and necessary. “There’s no Jim Crow here. We can be ourselves and have a good life, a better life.”

“Not that much better. As women, the only protection we have is marriage. And a Negro man, whether he works as a janitor, bus boy”—Mary started to interject, but Lillian kept talking as if she knew what Mary was going to say—“doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief—here, up north or down south—can’t offer me or you much.” Lillian, Mary saw now, shared Richard’s cynicism. “But you’re free to go if you want to. I won’t tell.”

Mary understood now that a return south would break her momma’s heart. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Lillian turned her head to one side, as if she was analyzing her sincerity. “You can’t come here and ruin things for me.”

“Never.”

“Come on, then.”

In the living room, Lillian removed a stack of books from the seat of one of her green-velvet-upholstered chairs and dragged it over to the couch. After lighting a cigarette, she began a lecture on what she called the Seven Rules:

1. Discretion is paramount. “Don’t share unnecessary information about your life now, or your past. The more you volunteer, the more comfortable people are asking.”

2. Never comment on or engage in conversation about race or politics. “It’s unladylike to have too many opinions. Some of what people say will be difficult to digest; it’s best to condition yourself not to have a feeling either way.”

3. Ignore Negroes. “The city is so segregated you can go months without ever even seeing a Negro.” She said “Negro” with a sliver of distaste on her tongue, as if she wasn’t Colored, as if she had never been Colored. It was obvious she preferred the separation of races for reasons outside of safety. In case Mary was unsure, Lillian made it crystal clear: she was not to go to the Negro part of town for any reason, or engage with Negroes in service or whom she encountered on the street.

4. Never get pregnant. “Traits skip generations—who knows what the baby will come out looking like. Even the slightest bit of brown or hair kink won’t be able to be explained.”

“How does one perform wifely duties and avoid pregnancy?”

Lillian laughed. “Wifely duties? You’re so old-fashioned.” She explained what a diaphragm was. “There’s no guarantee every time, but it helps.”

“And if?”

“There are things that can be done.”

Mary cringed. She’d heard of the things midwives did, things other than deliver babies. She never had the stomach for pain or bodily secretions—even her own. She’d fainted when she started her period.

“You used to talk about having children all the time. You really want to give that up?” Mary asked.

Lillian picked at her thumbnail. “Who’s to say my children would be wonderful? If they were awful, I’d regret staying Negro just to have had them.” She went back to her rules.

5. Marry well. Money is the best protection. “I could have stayed Negro to be poor.” Clearly, Lillian’s preoccupation with marriage hadn’t changed. But when they were children, her stories always either began or ended with her being swept off her feet. Her shift from romanticism to security struck Mary as sad.

6. Die White. “You telling someone about you, tells about me. I intend to die White, which means you have to too.”

7. Stay away from others who are passing. “There’s a whole group of them that run around together. It isn’t safe.”

“What about us?”

Lillian went to her bar, a shelf built into the wall near the door. She poured herself a generous splash of gin. “That’s different. Having family makes people less suspicious of you, less apt to pry. Those other girls, they invite attention, and if one of them is found out, they’re all under suspicion.”

Mary found that idea ridiculous; it gave White folks far too much credit. “They’d never suspect we’d be so cunning. Besides, without evidence, no one could prove it.”

Lillian pointed a finger. “Evidence doesn’t matter. Stay away from them. If something happens to you, it happens to me. We’re stuck together now. Oh, and most important: from now on, never call me Lillian,” Lillian—Emma—said. “Not even when we’re alone. Otherwise, you’ll slip up in public. And your name is Kitty, Kitty Lane Karr.” She tapped her chin with her pointer finger. “Seriously, do you prefer Lane? Lanie? Lana, even?”

“I like Kitty.” Mary thought it sounded like a movie star’s name.

“Kitty it is. Mary is dead from this moment on. Forget she ever existed. Cut off your memory from everything that Mary experienced, or else it’ll come back to bite you—I promise. Speaking of which, you have to write to your fella. Make sure he doesn’t come looking for you.”

Dread washed over her again. No matter the reason she gave, Richard would only hear that he wasn’t good enough. With the world constantly saying it, Mary didn’t want to be another reinforcement of that message.

Emma pulled a photo album from the bookshelf built between the fireplace and the front door. She dropped it on Kitty’s lap. Its edges were frayed, and it smelled stale, as if it had been locked in a dank basement. The pages were overstuffed with yellowed, curling photographs. “You’ll have to study this. It’s filled with pictures of people we can call kin.”

She opened it on Kitty’s lap and pointed to a portrait of a young couple. “Our parents, Jack and Grace Karr, died in a car crash in Boston. That’s where we’re from. I was eight, and you were five. It happened in the summer. Don’t ever be too specific.”

On the next page was an older woman in a wheelchair. “Our father’s rich aunt Carrie took us in. She got sick two years ago, your junior year in high school. I had already moved to Los Angeles at that point—and you stayed to take care of her.”

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