“Holy Ghost. What about you?”
“St. Augustine,” she said. “My daddy won’t step foot in there, says he won’t go to a church that seats Negroes in the back, but Mother says that’s just his excuse, he wouldn’t go to any church, even one that let them sit on the altar next to the priest himself.”
They both laughed.
“I wonder how my sister and your friend are doing,” Evelyn smirked, still trying to stretch their time. “They’re out some late.”
“Going to be much later with my friend,” Renard laughed.
Evelyn didn’t join in. Ruby wasn’t as conservative as she was, not by a long shot, but Evelyn wouldn’t stand for her being ridiculed.
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it, miss.” His face scrunched up with regret. “I’m sure he’s treating her real respectable. He’s a respectable sort of guy, but he’s a night owl, that’s all, and he loves to talk. They’re probably just seeing a movie, and you know how that goes, it takes so long to exit from the Negro balcony, that’s all I meant.”
Evelyn nodded.
“I meant it, miss. I won’t suffer anybody talking ill about a lady. He wouldn’t try it, but even if he did, I’d make sure it was the last word he said about your sister.”
Evelyn smiled. “And what about you? How do you speak about ladies?”
He smiled. “I haven’t had much reason to speak about them before,” he said, his stutter gone. “But if I saw Andrew today, I might tell him I made a new friend.”
“Just a friend, huh?” Evelyn didn’t know where her boldness had been lurking.
“A special friend,” Renard finished. “Real special,” he repeated, walking backward now, down the porch steps and then the sidewalk until he was out of sight.
Evelyn revived the night in her mind once he was gone; so thoroughly was she coiled inside the retelling she didn’t hear her sister until Ruby reached their bedroom.
Usually when Ruby went out and Evelyn stayed home, she had the decency to be quiet, as quiet as she could, but this time she slammed her nightgown drawer shut, she kicked off her shoes. She stomped to the bathroom, made a to-do of splashing water over her face. Once she was back in the room, Evelyn had no choice but to sit up and ask what had gone wrong.
“Everything.” Ruby was close to tears.
Evelyn had seen her like this only one other time when word had gotten back about Langston, and Ruby had considered transferring to secretarial school in Baton Rouge.
“It started off all right I suppose. He held my hand, he took me to Dufon’s, he told me to order anything I liked. But we hadn’t been seated for more than five minutes when another girl walked up to the table. I think she’s one of the Chapitals; I’ve seen her around your campus. Surprised I remembered her, not much to look at, really, Evelyn, I could outmatch her on my worst day, but he sat there and held a conversation with her for five minutes before he turned back to me. He didn’t even introduce me. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
“Oh, Ruby.” Evelyn didn’t know what to say. Normally her sister’s moods infiltrated her own, and Evelyn was certain something tangible would befall her as a direct result of them, but this time she felt insulated in a world of her own creation. “Oh, Ruby,” she repeated, not sure how long she had stalled since the first time she said it. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sure he was just being polite.” She almost slipped and said Renard had mentioned that his friend was an outgoing fellow, but she couldn’t reference Renard, not at a time like this.
Ruby shook her head, huffing. “The blind leading the blind,” she said. “I should have known not to ask you your opinion.”
Evelyn smarted at that and was tempted to correct her, but she held back. If she introduced Renard now, he would forever be a wedge between them; it was early, but Evelyn already knew that she would see him again.
“Anyway, I’ve already decided,” Ruby went on, “I’m never seeing him again. There’s no way. He’s the type to think too high of himself, and let me tell you his hair is not as straight as it looked the other day, he puts some sort of oil in there, and he’s not as light as we thought either. I still can’t get a read on his family, what they did before his daddy lucked up on that teaching gig, and anyway if Brother’s grades are any indication of the kind of educating they’re doing at Valena C. Jones, that whole family is in a world of trouble.”
Evelyn could tell her part in the performance was over, and she turned to the wall and made like she was sleeping. Ruby kept going for another hour though: The man hadn’t ordered his food the way Daddy would; she could tell he wasn’t used to eating at such fine establishments by the way he asked rather than told the waiter what he was going to have; he talked about the war like he wanted to be a part of it, when everyone knew you didn’t discuss such gruesome matters in front of a lady. Not only that, when they walked home, a white man passed, and Andrew lowered his head and nearly pushed her to the side of the street.
“Daddy never would have done it that way,” Ruby whispered. “He wouldn’t have gotten himself killed, this is Louisiana, but he would have found a way to protect us and maintain his dignity. That’s the kind of man I’m looking for, and that Andrew, he was nowhere close. Let me tell you, Evelyn, you ought to count your blessings that his friend didn’t ask you out. You know what they say about birds of a feather. If Andrew was no count, then that old uneven-hem man must be the bottom of the barrel.”
The next morning, Evelyn slept in, though she heard the eggs cackling, smelled the bacon smoking on the fire. She was so tired she even tarried in bed past the doorbell ringing, then Miss Georgia’s shrill voice and high laughter. Finally she heard her own name.
She shot up, stuck her ear to the door, but couldn’t make out the conversation, just a few smatterings of words here and there, “nice looking,” and “about an hour,” and “I kept an eye out to make sure.” Evelyn couldn’t hear any of her mother’s responses, but it didn’t matter. As she dressed, her late-night excitement faded into the dull certainty that whatever magic had been sparked on that swing had been snuffed out in her mother’s sitting room this morning. Her father hadn’t been home, but he would be in a matter of minutes, and there was no question her mother would repeat what she’d heard, her father would storm in her room and forbid her from even thinking about Renard again, and she’d go on attending classes at Dillard, coming home at night, and barely fending off her loneliness, which was rising above her head.