Nina McCullough was Blair House’s best fundraiser and one of the prettiest women in the room. Married to a hotelier, she had someone to tend to her every whim. She sat next to Maude Reade, who was scouring the paper. “That poor boy’s death may have done more for the cause than anything could have.”
“They’re going to do an interview,” the Blair House secretary, Addie Banks, said. She sat slightly behind the circle, near the window, taking notes. Her skin gleamed in the light as though she’d just applied lotion. She wore her hair in thick French braids that accentuated the slant of her eyes and her high forehead.
“Why now?”
“To brag about how they got away with murder.”
“Reporters should have worked harder for a confession.” A woman named Liberty Stills flung away the side of the paper she had been sharing with Maude. Liberty sat taller than everyone in the room, and her feet were nearly twice the size of everyone’s, Kitty noticed as she crossed her ankles.
“The acquittal opened people’s eyes.”
“White people’s eyes,” another, sweeter voice echoed from a woman who wore a perfectly coiffed wig. Cora identified her as Harriet Stafford.
Kitty was skeptical. White people existed on the periphery of their pain, never having to feel it in their hearts, in their bones. She surprised herself by saying so. “Everyone at Telescope thought there would be a conviction, but they never said anything about the acquittal. It was forgotten completely when James Dean died.”
Cora whispered to Lucy, sitting a few stairs above her and Kitty, “She’s quick.”
“Told you,” Kitty heard Lucy respond.
“If they ain’t open already, I don’t know what else can do it,” said the petite woman next to Harriet. Her tangerine lipstick made her pale skin sallow.
“That’s Billie. She’s with us.” Cora pointed.
Lucy hushed them as her sister took the floor again.
“Bring up the riots, the boycotts; talk about the protests and the dogs. The murders. Talk about the news. Keep it on people’s minds,” Laurie instructed. “In the grocery store line, at dinner”—she looked up at the stairs—“at the studio, don’t let people just exist in their worlds. Make them aware.”
“Isn’t that impolite—or worse, couldn’t it raise suspicion?” Kitty asked.
“You don’t have to have a strong opinion to put it in someone’s mind,” Laurie said. She walked to the middle of the room to meet Kitty’s eye. “You can’t be afraid.”
“I am.” Edna, a straight-haired redhead, sat next to Addie by the window. “My husband’s agitated by some of my conversation in social settings. I’ve made myself unpopular with some of the wives.” The medium-brown-skinned woman on her opposite side took her hand. “I want to leave him,” Edna said.
“And what are we going to do without the little bit of protection he provides?” This speaker had a round face colored like a black walnut. The room was split in reaction to her question.
“What Wilma means is, you can’t,” Laurie said. “As a police officer, he’s too valuable.”
“But we’re starting to become unpopular anyway,” Edna said.
“Guess you’ll have to work harder to prove you’re one of them,” Wilma said.
“I’m unhappy!”
Wilma mocked her. “Poor princess. Who isn’t?”
“I’m actually quite satisfied,” Lilly Brown said, putting her hand to her chest. She hovered at the paper-bag line and wore too much makeup. At this comment, Kitty saw Harriet knock knees with the woman on her other side, who stifled a smirk.
“That’s ’cause all you do is socialize with those other sadity Negroes,” Wilma hissed.
“She ain’t wrong,” Liberty said, under her breath.
“Wilma, you’re welcome anytime,” Lilly said.
“They’d take one look at my black—”
Cora stood up. “Hey! Enough.” Lips smacked, but everyone quieted.
“Edna, your leaving could cause problems for everyone,” Laurie said. “Wilma’s not wrong. You’re going to have to work harder.”
Emma’s warnings flooded Kitty’s mind as the room compiled suggestions for Edna to fix things. Everyone agreed. Edna would have to display some sort of cruelty or sanction it.
What Lucy and Cora were up to was indeed worse than Emma could have imagined.
* * *
After announcements, the oldest of the group, a preacher’s wife named Bertha Mills, stood to lead them in prayer. She wore a long floral dress that covered everything but her hands, feet, and face. Her gray hair was pressed but fuzzy at the edges, as though she’d been sweating.
After a solid two minutes, Kitty’s eyes, which never closed, met Laurie’s across the circle. Laurie widened hers in exasperation before jostling Bertha’s hand to finish.
“Desserts in the kitchen,” Bertha said in a raspy voice.
Ending on a sweet note was symbolic, Lucy said, meant to remind them to be grateful for each other, Blair House, and the opportunity to help their people. These were blessings so many others didn’t receive.
With champagne and coffee cake, Kitty settled alone in a chair in the corner. The others stood about the room in clusters of likeness that couldn’t always be physically identified. They all looked so worldly; Kitty imagined all of them had careers, children, and husbands. She wasn’t sure she fit in. Lucy kept eyeing Kitty to urge her to mingle, but Kitty ignored her, pretending to be consumed by her extra-large piece of coffee cake. She was beginning to feel as though she could be ejected from the circle as fast as she’d been included.
The women usually dispersed, one or two at a time, over the course of two hours, and the first that day was Billie. “Wish me luck; I have an audition.”
Wilma started again. “I don’t understand all of this performing.” She had burn scars on her hands and arms. “Any one of us could win an Oscar for the roles we play every day.”
“Wilma, we’ve talked about this,” Lucy said, in a parent’s tone. “It’s about access, and the images people see of us around the world.”
Wilma took a step toward Lucy, as though she was squaring off for a fight. “But it’s not images of us—it’s images of them that they don’t know are us.” Others started to notice the exchange.
Lucy didn’t move. “And you find no satisfaction in that?”
“Don’t matter unless people know, Lucy-Goosey.”
Lucy pointed at her. “Don’t call me that.”
“I’m playing. It rhymes.”
Lucy’s cheeks blazed. “If you have a problem with our initiatives, bring it to a vote.”
“No, I get it. We’re in LA.”
“Correct.”
Wilma left next, causing a flood of departures among the most pigmented. No one was rude or hasty, but leaving then was taking an apparent side. With only those who hovered twenty degrees above and below the color line left, Kitty was reminded of the tension that had defined her life. She hadn’t left Cottonwood and come all the way to Los Angeles to fight among her own kind.
When Nina went out the back, Lucy called Kitty to the front door, where she and another woman were putting on their coats.
“Kitty, this is Mamie. She runs a nightclub, a grocery store, and a thrift store over on the Colored side of town.”
Kitty was confused; this woman was as fair as she. Mamie seemed to understand. “I pass only occasionally.”
“Jack’s parents are hosting Christmas in Washington this year,” Lucy said to Mamie, before turning to explain to Kitty. “Jack is thinking about running for office. Senators on both sides of his family, so he’s practically a shoo-in.”
Lucy’s parents-in-law were hosting a donor event before Christmas to explore their son’s political future, she told the women, and Lucy needed new clothes.
“Would you leave Telescope?” Kitty asked.
Lucy tied her black scarf around her head in the hallway mirror. “If being a senator’s wife was more beneficial.”
“Cora’s going?” Mamie made an O of her mouth to apply a frosty-pink lipstick.
Lucy opened the door for Mamie. “She wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good for her.” Mamie wiggled her brows before opening the front door and walking off down the wide, paved street.
After shutting the door, Lucy turned to Kitty. “I don’t have to explain why dating in the political sector is important, do I?”