Harlem Sunset, page 11
But it was better that Rosa Maria wasn’t there. They both needed space. That was what Louise thought. She knew if she left now, she could get back before Rosa Maria went to bed, but she stayed in her seat. She was still seething from their fight, seething from everything they had said.
She wasn’t so sure they could survive this.
Louise looked out to the dance floor. She thought she heard her name whispered in low tones near her ear.
When she looked around, no one was there.
20
HAVE YOU STOPPED to consider this may not be about Rosa Maria?”
Somehow, the drugstore was the most private place they could think to meet. Louise had not wanted to sit across from Harriet, not since their kiss, but there was nothing she could do about it.
Louise was Harriet’s story.
She didn’t know if she liked that, but at least she was able to tell her own story. She focused on the glass in front of her, the radio playing a baseball game in the background. Anything to distract herself from Harriet’s lips. Harriet was wearing a dress of dark blue, one Louise thought she might have already seen on her. Harriet’s lips were painted a dark blood red, and when they parted as she wrote, they looked as inviting as ever.
Louise never thought she’d be a person who’d conduct an affair, and actually, she wasn’t. It was one kiss. One kiss could be a mistake, and that was all it was.
Sitting near Harriet made her heart start to race. She thought about pressing her body against Harriet, running a hand through her hair, exploring her body. A heat rose to Louise’s cheeks. Had she and Rosa Maria just been . . . tolerating each other?
She didn’t want to think about it.
“It’s about me.” Louise placed her straw between her lips, leaving a smear of her own lipstick behind.
“I took the liberty of looking into your kidnapping case.” Harriet flicked through her notebook, passing through her pages and pages of written information. Louise wondered how she kept it all organized.
“Aha.” Harriet tapped on a page with a nail that was varnished royal blue to match her dress. “Here. Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Haynes and Etta Hall. The girls you were with a decade ago.”
“How did you do that?”
Harriet’s smile was just on the right side of smug. “I looked it up,” she said as if that remark explained anything. “Lottie lives in a hotel now. I can’t find Etta. It seems worth a shot.”
From the radio, cheers exploded as a ball was hit well, Louise assumed. Louise stared at the names in front of her. She tried to picture the girls they had been, but she had barely met them.
“How odd,” Louise said.
They’d be young women just like her, edging onto thirty and old age, in that order. It was hard to think of them as adults. She permanently saw them as crying girls in that cold basement.
She had been so brave then. She had had to be just as brave for the past year.
Louise was eager for her life to settle down.
That was all she wanted: a calm life where she didn’t have to be anything to anyone.
While Louise was thinking, Harriet was writing. She tore the page out and handed it to Louise. “This is where Lottie lives.”
Louise stared at the numbers of the address, then tucked the piece of paper into her purse.
“Is it okay if I try to make some contact with your family? Your friends? The story would be so much stronger if I did, you know.” Louise recognized Harriet’s casual tone.
“Have you done so already?” Louise asked.
“I talked to your father on the phone.” Harriet began flipping through her notebook again. She stopped on a page titled LLOYD FAMILY. “He insists you were a troublemaker from the beginning.”
“Impossible. I had to be a mother at ten years old.” Louise rolled her eyes.
“I’m going to talk to him at your house. I’m so sorry—I just have to. Actually, a little later today.” That explained Harriet’s demure dress. “And don’t worry. I’ll give you a chance to dispute everything he says about you,” she said.
Louise didn’t like the idea of it. Even the image of Harriet sharing tea with her father that flitted through her head. This was her story. She was supposed to be telling it. But there was no point in saying what she wanted to say. It was done. Harriet had already made contact and had set her plans in motion. So Louise said nothing instead.
She took another sip from her glass, then moved to hear the bubbles pop furiously.
Harriet closed her notebook. She always did so with a little bit of a happy sigh, as if telling stories made her feel content.
Louise picked her glass up, feeling the cold on her fingers. “We don’t need to . . . talk, do we?”
“Do we?”
Louise raised an eyebrow. Maybe Harriet was playing dumb. Maybe they had nothing to talk about. “I suppose not.”
That would have been true if she could forget about the kiss, forget about Harriet’s warmth, forget about their bodies pressed together in a desperate attempt to get closer.
But the memory would fade.
She loved Rosa Maria.
She knew that. They were going to grow old together. But the more she thought about it, the more it felt as if she was convincing herself of something rather than just knowing it was true. She didn’t like that feeling at all. The guilt she had felt since the kiss sat in her stomach, a constant reminder that made it hard for her to eat.
The radio again brought her back to the present. Harriet was concentrating on emptying her glass; she had gotten a shake even though it was a cold March evening outside. They dug through their purses, placed their change on the counter, and exited the drugstore.
It was a windy evening. The two women linked arms as they fought against the Harlem foot traffic.
“Good luck tomorrow,” Harriet said when they parted.
And Louise would think Harriet had actually meant it.
* * *
• • •
HAD SHE GONE to the wrong place? Louise was standing in the middle of the street, clutching the piece of paper Harriet had given her the previous night. She looked at it, and now she wasn’t sure she was reading the address correctly. Over her shoulder was the Kodak that Rosa Maria had given to her for her birthday. She had taken her time, taking snaps of the city, as she made her way downtown.
She had taken the train down to the Lower East Side, and the numbers were melding together on the paper, not making sense to her.
Had she gone the wrong way? She was standing in the middle of the Lower East Side, trying to find the hotel where Lottie lived. She stared at the piece of paper, wishing there was some sort of device that she could hold and it would guide her to where she needed to be.
She prided herself on having a very good sense of the city. Louise was a city girl through and through but she was realizing how much of that was based around Harlem.
She was lost.
She resented the fact that her people had been shoved into Harlem, and they were barely wanted there. She wondered if there was a place in the world for someone like her.
She pulled her coat closer around her shoulders. She could give up, take the hour-long subway ride home, and call Harriet from the phone in her apartment. But she decided to back up and try it again. The sun was setting. She had spent all day trying to find a new job, and she had learned that with her name constantly in the papers, she was too much of a liability. Then she had gone to church to hope and pray that her life would turn itself around.
And all day long, she had thought about Lottie Haynes and Etta Hall. Had they been searching for her? Had they seen her in the paper as Nora had? It was weird to have a shared experience like that and not remain in touch. Louise lamented the fact that she had barely gotten to know Nora before she was taken away from her.
The night, which should have been the best of the year, the night she turned twenty-seven, was a black hole in her memory.
And every time she thought about it, her fear of the world was renewed.
Louise didn’t know how much longer she could wander around this part of the city, one she didn’t know very well. She was hyperaware that she was the only Black person on the street and that meant she had to be more careful. A couple of women—older than her, rich enough to hire one or two someones like her—sneered at her as she passed. She wasn’t used to feeling so exposed. She missed the easy comfort of Harlem, the familiar streets.
But she had to get used to this.
Louise raised her chin and continued down the street. She thought she was hearing her name, but she knew that there was no one around her who knew her.
Her nerves were frayed. She was tired of living every day in fear. It was now something she couldn’t get rid of, as if it was an essential item she needed to have with her. She was looking around every corner, leaving a light on at night.
She didn’t like this feeling. It felt as if something was going to happen to her and she didn’t know when. She wanted a strong drink and a good night’s sleep.
“Hey! Lovie!”
That was real. At the sound of her middle name, she turned. She knew it wasn’t Rafael who had called her, so it had to have been the only other person in the world who would use her middle name.
Sure enough, Schoonmaker ambled toward her. “I thought that was you,” he said gaily. “Isn’t it a wonderful evening?”
Before he could do anything, she opened her camera and took a photo.
It had been raining most of the day and the evening hung on to the angry storm clouds. He extended an arm, and being too shocked to do anything else, she took it.
“Are you following me?”
“Just a happy coincidence, Lovie. I’m thinking about expanding. I was looking at a building or two.”
“The Club King of Manhattan, huh?”
He gave her a bashful smile. “That’s what they call me.” He almost preened at her use of the nickname. “Have you gotten anywhere with the Eye in the Sky?”
Louise exhaled. There was a part of her that was grateful to see a familiar face, even if she wasn’t sure how she felt about him yet. “Nowhere. I have no idea who killed her.”
“Can I give you some advice?”
Louise knew from experience that he would give it anyway.
“I think you need to change your direction. Nora had a lot of enemies, but what about your friend?”
It wasn’t even good advice. She blinked as she took it in.
“She has no enemies.”
“What about you?”
“My only enemy is dead.”
Schoonmaker laughed. “Come on, Lovie. You don’t have one enemy? Not someone you kicked out for being too drunk? Where can I take you?”
“The subway. I need to go home.”
Schoonmaker began to whistle.
She could feel heads turn as they passed. “Did you have a good day today?”
“Everything is coming up roses, Lovie.”
21
GETTING JOSIE BETTER wasn’t an easy road. Josie was sitting at Louise’s kitchen table, surly and hungover, her arms folded over her chest and her face folded into a scowl.
Louise was exhausted, and on the long list of things she wanted to do, she would put fighting with her sister right under having a tooth pulled out.
“Josie, come on.”
They had been in these positions for forty minutes. Josie was still too hungover to form comprehensible sentences. Louise was tired of having to be the disciplinarian. Her job as the eldest sister was supposed to be teaching her sisters how to do their makeup and helping them sneak out of the house.
She would never admit when she was in over her head, but she was in over her head.
“I just wanted to have some fun.”
Josie’s jaw was set. Louise recognized her own stubbornness in her sister.
“I never get to have fun anymore.”
Josie was still dressed for going out. Louise had found her, drunk and exhausted, in a spangled gold dress and matching heels, outside of her door at four in the morning.
“That is not true and you know it.”
Louise leaned against the counter. She was furious, but was trying to talk quietly. Rosa Maria was still asleep, and the last thing Louise wanted to do was wake her. Things were still tense between them but they were in a much-needed quiet period in which all they did was exchange pleasantries. She didn’t see things warming up between them anytime soon.
And she had bigger things to deal with. She had called Minna, who she knew woke early. They were planning a two-pronged defense attack. And Louise was a little anxious to see how Minna would blame her for this current situation.
Louise sipped her coffee. Truly, she was too tired to put together sentences and to figure out what she should say so her sister would hear it. Maybe she should stop trying. Maybe she should withdraw all support and let Josie figure it out herself.
She poured a glass of water as she considered this. She couldn’t do that. It went against everything she knew. They had been raised under the creed of “family first.” That was important to her. She couldn’t leave Josie out in the cold, not when she needed help more than ever.
So Louise decided to say little until Minna arrived.
She placed the glass of water on the table in front of Josie. Her sister eyed it, then leaned her head on the table, closing her eyes. “Can I please just go home?”
“No.” They had been through this four times now, and every time, Louise felt a little bit more discouraged. “Minna will be here soon and we just want to talk to you.”
“I just want to go home.”
Josie’s voice was soft, and for a moment, Louise remembered the baby she had been.
“I know, but this is important.”
Louise pulled a chair to the table, placing her cup of coffee in front of herself. Josie watched her do so, then closed her eyes again.
“Come on, Sunshine. You and I had a plan.”
With that, Josie sat straight up, her eyes narrowed in anger. “I don’t want to be in your shadow all the time, Louise.”
“I never said that,” Louise said.
“I don’t want your stupid plan. I don’t need you to take care of me.”
Louise could feel her sister’s temper rearing up. It was like a kettle, slow to simmer but once she started, she couldn’t be stopped. Josie rose from her spot, angry flames in her eyes.
“I never wanted any of this. And I’m not supposed to be here without her. I don’t deserve to be here.”
In one fluid motion, Josie smashed the glass of water on the floor, nimbly picked up the biggest piece of glass she could, and with one millisecond’s worth of hesitation dragged the glass over the skin of her wrists, closing her eyes against the pain.
Louise acted before she could really process what was in front of her. She grabbed a towel, maybe dirty but better than nothing, from the kitchen and wrapped her sister’s wrists in an attempt to stop the blood from flowing.
“Help! Help me, please!” She was screaming the words over and over, hoping that someone would hear, hoping that someone would help her. She screamed until her throat was raw and then kept screaming.
Rosa Maria came rushing from the bathroom. She kept a cool head in an emergency, and Louise was grateful for that. Rosa Maria took one look at the scene in front of her and, barefoot and in her bathrobe, she rushed to the street to call for help.
“Let me die,” Josie wailed. “Why can’t you let me die? I want to die. Let me die.”
Louise was still screaming over her sister’s pleas. She squeezed as hard as she could, trying to stop the blood flowing from her sister’s wrists. She held Josie close, rocking back and forth, unable to stop screaming until her neighbors were at her door, hovering, wanting to help.
One woman who lived a few doors down kneeled next to Louise and took over holding Josie’s wrists still and tight. She calmly directed a bystander to get Louise a glass of water.
The commotion around 3I continued until an ambulance took Josie away. Louise wasn’t allowed to ride with Josie; she’d have to follow after calling her father, a task she dreaded.
Just as Josie was being taken away, Minna appeared at the door, breathing heavily and clutching her swelling stomach. She didn’t say anything, just took one look at Louise sitting among broken glass, blood, and spilled water on the floor, and kneeled down, wrapping her arms around her elder sister.
It was that touch that made Louise begin to cry.
* * *
• • •
LOUISE HAD BEEN to this hospital only once before. But she recognized the nurse on the ward, Cristina, as a woman who had helped her the previous summer. Nurse Cristina was coming off of a twelve-hour shift—the only thing giving that away was an errant curl that had escaped from her little cap—but she still showed Louise to Josie’s room before she left.
“She’ll be fine, but she needs rest. You all have an hour.”
Louise had missed Cristina’s brisk and sensible tone.
Josie was lying on the bed, her eyes blinking sleepily. She was surrounded by Minna, their father, and their aunt. Louise hovered at the door, removing her hat and gloves.
She should have given it a couple of hours. She should have stayed at her apartment, cleaned the glass and water and blood.
But she had to be here.
She stepped into the room, not wanting to disturb the family moment going on. She hadn’t seen her aunt or father in months. Minna noticed her first. A hand on her stomach, where it always was, Minna reached toward Louise with her free hand.
Josie’s wrists were bandaged. The fingers of her right hand opened and closed slowly, and her eyes were glued to the window. She looked so small and so frail in the bed. No one said anything. There was nothing left to say.
