“And yes, very handsome,” Emma said. “So what?” Everyone laughed, and Emma pretended to pout. “I figure I have as good a chance of meeting him as anyone working here. Anyway, you’ll all thank me soon.” Emma raised her glass for a toast. “New jobs by the fall!”
Kitty followed suit, wishing she’d had more time with Lillian before meeting Emma, who, she’d discovered, had ugly things in her. She’d accused Kitty of being ungrateful for wanting a secretary job when, really, she was being selfish.
* * *
On the Fourth of July, they woke early, packed a lunch, and drove almost an hour up the Pacific Coast Highway to the beach at Malibu. Kitty was surprised to see only White people on the sand.
“I thought there was no segregation here?”
“They lied,” Emma said, gesturing for her help with the blanket. “It’s not the law, but they don’t hide their feelings. The pools, beaches—except for the sliver in Santa Monica—Negroes aren’t welcome.”
“Yet they swim in fish pee,” Kitty said.
Emma stuck an umbrella in the sand and squatted to twirl it deeper. “And White kids pee in pools just like Negro ones, yet they’re accepted everywhere.”
Kitty ran down to the water. The sound of the waves crashing onto the sand sounded like her mother’s tambourine. She couldn’t escape the missing. At home, everyone would be going to the church soon. There was always a bake sale, and everyone sat out on their blankets to eat until the fireworks started. The fireworks were lit on the White high school’s football field but could be seen from the rooftops of Cottonwood.
The ocean was ice cold, so she stayed ankle deep, liking the sinking sensation created by the water’s retreat. She stared out, wondering if it looked different from the murky Atlantic, which her mother said had a graveyard of African bones at its bottom.
Hearing Emma calling her, she ran up the beach. She’d been in the sun too long. She collapsed on the blanket under the umbrella, which Emma refused to leave.
“Browning first and reddening second is a dead giveaway,” Emma reminded her. In addition to the seven rules, she had a list of other things that could reveal Negro-ness: preferring spicy foods, not knowing the names of the most popular restaurants in town, using grease in your hair, and having interest in the Negro condition. Especially that.
It was why Emma kept her issues of Jet magazine hidden behind the books on her shelf. Kitty had called her out one morning when she tried to conceal it in front of the morning’s paper.
Isn’t that risky?
White people read Jet. It’s how they know what’s going on with us.
Then why do you keep them hidden? No one comes here.
I hide them from you.
You don’t have to pretend you don’t miss it.
I like to be informed, Kitty. That’s not the same as nostalgia.
The national papers glossed over the brutality, while the Negro media highlighted the racial tension that was getting worse all over the country. It made Kitty worry about her momma. The South was beyond flagrant, and though Negroes weren’t photographed hanging from trees in LA, economic prosperity, the benefit of the doubt, and common decency weren’t things Negroes could rely on anywhere in America.
Emma promised they would get word if something happened to their mothers, but Kitty wasn’t convinced. “What if no one’s around who knows to tell us, or how to find us?”
“I’ll be around, and we’ll know.”
Emma turned on the radio she had brought to distract Kitty from her envy of everyone else’s freedom under the sun. She stood to shake her hips to the music. “Get up and dance with me.”
“No thanks.”
Emma smiled at a man running toward them after a football.
He whistled. “Nice moves!”
Emma collapsed next to Kitty. “Everything will be easier once you settle into life with a man,” she said.
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
“It’s true.”
“I’m not interested in dating right now.” Kitty was on guard; how could she fall in love? There was never a moment when she wasn’t wide-eyed, looking down to make sure she didn’t trip. Fairy tales never featured Colored girls.
“The girls have offered to set you up, and you should let them. It’s borderline rude not to.”
“What if he can tell I’m Negro?”
Emma sat upright. “That’s your problem?”
Kitty had stopped Richard every time his mouth slipped under her collar, barely able to resist exploring the throbbing throughout her lower half when his lips moved to her neck.
“Seriously?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to get pregnant.”
“There are other things to do without you getting pregnant.”
“Like what?”
What if her body looked different from what a White woman’s was supposed to look like? Despite their stark differences in skin tone, both her and her mother’s nipples were brown.
“You look White, and that’s all that matters. Only carelessness and self-doubt can give you away. Do you still have feelings for that boy down south?”
“No.”
“Are you still writing him letters?”
“No.”
Another lie. She’d been writing to Richard all summer. Worse, she’d given him their home address to hide it from Emma, who had dominion over the post office box. The more she wrote Richard, the guiltier she felt about it. She knew she wasn’t going back, and writing him was like a security blanket that kept her tied to Mary. Richard pressed for her return date in every letter, so they could marry before the semester started. His most recent had the question underlined in all caps. She’d been carrying her reply around in her purse for a week already, unable to mail it:
I’M NEVER COMING BACK. I CAN’T MARRY YOU. I’M SO SORRY. PLEASE DON’T EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN.
“Then why?” Emma pressed. “Do you still want to be an actress?”
“I never said I wanted to act.” Kitty hadn’t pondered that pursuit since leaving Winston but was still sneaking away at lunch a couple times a week to watch rehearsals.
Emma frowned. “You didn’t have to. You used to recite lines from the movie in the theater and force me to trade stories with you.”
“I thought you liked it!”
“Not as much as you, and it was your idea.”
“Why do you work at a film studio if you hate it so much?” Kitty asked.
“It just happened that way.”
“But you used to love going to the movies.”
“I went ’cause you wanted to.”
That wasn’t Kitty’s recollection.
“Who did you tell your stories to after me?” Emma wanted to know.
“I wrote them down, told them to myself.”
“You’ll be sorry having your head in the clouds when I get married and leave you.”
“You’re not even seeing anyone.” Since Kitty had been there, Emma had spent every weekend up all hours of the night, drinking alone.
Emma threw a grape at her face. “I will be soon.”
When it got cold, they wrapped up in blankets, watching others soak up the sun and play with their children in the waves. Sadness came to Kitty again as a little girl squealed, running from the waves, and crashed into her mother’s arms.
* * *
Emma pointed to the Negro beach in Santa Monica on their way home. “It’s aptly named the Inkwell.” Every inch of the forty-yard stretch of sand was covered by a blanket or a brownish body. They’d enjoyed dozens of feet of space from others in Malibu. “I come early to avoid the traffic. There used to be another beach farther south, called Manhattan Beach, but they took it. So now everyone comes here.” Emma tapped the steering wheel, anxious for the light to turn.
The ocean air blew the smell of barbeque to the street. Women stood in clusters, talking, as kids played close by. Their skin glistened in the sunlight. Around them, the men were arranging umbrellas and blankets on the sand. Music was playing from several radios, and boys were throwing footballs around.
“Don’t you miss it?”