Because We Are (6 page)

Emma did not miss the sarcasm. The nerve of Marvin, she thought, bringing me to
her
house, of all places. The anger she had felt returned. As they came closer to the table set with covered, heavy silver serving dishes, Emma noticed a fancy keg with beer on tap. The effects of Kali's affectionate stance with Marvin destroyed Emma's desire for food; however, the table looked inviting. Maybe there were goodies under those covers worth nibbling.

Emma was stunned when she uncovered qualudes, pink hearts, and black beauties—uppers, downers, speed—all for the choosing. Other dishes offered solid, well-rolled joints and small squares of something that looked like dirt; and there was a small crystal dish of what looked like sugar with small spoons. Emma's anger turned to fear and she knew she had no business in that room.

She turned away from the table. The lights, the smells, the eternal music, and now the fear made her feel caged. What if she were caught here? Her mother would die, and her father would kill her.

Marvin sensed something was wrong and followed her immediately.

“Marvin, I'm ready to go,” she said.

“The party hasn't started yet, baby. I promised that we're going to learn how to fly. Remember?”

“I'm not sure I can learn. Let's go.”

He wrapped her in his arms and let his cheek rest on the top of her head. “Listen, you my woman?”

Emma felt as though she were melting inside. Quickly she moved her head, forcing his cheek off, and looked up into his eyes. “Don't ask me that now. Not here. I'll answer that when we're alone.”

“We
are
alone. I'm alone. You're alone. We're alone.” He drew her closer. “You're my woman, so you'll stay,” he whispered in her ear, “until we're ready to go.”

“Feast time, feast time,” Kali called as she danced around the room with the crystal bowl and little spoons. Everybody followed her to the center of the room and gathered around as she placed the bowl on the floor.

Marvin took Emma's hand to lead her toward what was becoming a large circle. Emma knew she could not be a part of that. Suddenly she pulled away and ran up the steps.

Marvin followed. “Em, what's wrong?” He grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Nothing's wrong. I just can't.”

“What you mean, you can't?” Then he softened, “If you're my woman, you'll learn.”

“Oh, please, Marvin. You know I care about you. Why do I have to prove it in that way? Let's go.”

“I'm not ready yet. So relax.” He held her close and rubbed between her shoulders.

She pulled away. “I don't know your super-rich friends. I'm going home.”

“How”?

The thought of having to call her mother almost made her panic. To call her father would be even worse. She remembered the money in her purse and was grateful that her mother always insisted upon it being there. “I'll call a cab,” she said.

They waited in the quiet of the upper room. Emma sat on the edge of the white sofa, her feet deep in the soft, velvety-white carpet, trying to cope with her feelings. She loved Marvin. Maybe she shouldn't leave him—but that room below, those people, were just too much for her.

Finally the cab came. Marvin helped her in and instructed the driver to take her home. He pressed the fare into the driver's hand. Emma protested, but Marvin waved them on and the cab pulled away.

All the way home she tried not to think; she tried to drown her thoughts in the beautiful lights, but they no longer charmed her. The questions she did not want to answer surfaced again and again. How could Marvin dare take me to that place? Why did I “flake out” and leave him there? Why couldn't I be at ease and take just one whiff? Just one. What harm could that do? Oh, Marvin, she cried to herself, why couldn't you bring me home? Why did we have to go to that kind of party, which is no party at all?

Her mother was still up. “Emma, you're home early.” Her mother was surprised.

“Not that early,” Emma said, trying to appear nonchalant.

“It's only five after eleven.”

“Then you can get a good night's sleep.” Emma did not want to get too close to her mother for fear the odor of that room might be in her clothes, in her hair. So she said, “I had a great time. Good night, Mama.”

She lay in her bed, going over every detail of the evening. She felt cheated. Why had she been afraid? Suddenly in her mind's eye flashed the words:
Emma Walsh arrested in dope raid
. “Oh, my God,” she said aloud. And all the fear she had tried to contain overwhelmed her. She knew that she wanted to see Marvin again, but she was relieved to be home in her bed.

Seven

Emma awoke early the next morning remembering the relief she had known just before falling asleep. Now, as she thought of last night and of Marvin, the anger and hurt returned.

Had her mother gone through that with Jody—being at the same parties, at the same places? Of course not! Marvin's not my husband … he's a free agent. But he's as much mine as he is Kali's. But what did Kali mean: Marvin can find his way there in his sleep. Is she in that house all by herself? But he took me! She thought of Marvin in Kali's embrace. If only I could be that way, adoring Marvin in front of people like that. Again she could see Kali's arms around Marvin; she knew the anger and shame she felt then was similar to the anger she felt when she first saw her father and Jody embracing. Could what happened to her mother be happening to her?

Suddenly she threw off the cover, got out of bed, and bounded around the room. “Forget Marvin,” she said as she started putting things in order.

She pulled shoes from under the bed, hung up clothes that had been strewn around all week. She knew she had to keep busy or she would break down and cry. She restacked records, organized her tapes, threw away old papers, made her desk neat, and put all of her magazines orderly in the rack her mother had insisted she use.

Then she changed her linen, made her bed, and finally was ready to vacuum. She didn't want to wake her mother so she took a minute to survey her results. She had forgotten how the soft yellow walls and the yellow print curtains at her windows gave such a warm feeling. The white desk and built-in shelves that held her record player, typewriter, books, and other odds and ends had emerged from all the clutter to give her comfort and courage to adjust posters that had been thrown up haphazardly. She decided to keep Michael Jackson; to take down Teddy Pendergrass and put Stevie Wonder in his place. Wouldn't her mother be pleasantly surprised?

She sat on the side of her bed feeling good about herself, wishing she had some way to make Marvin feel that she was special, too. The debutante ball would do just that. He would certainly take her. They would have all of that evening and an early morning breakfast. But what if the Golden Slippers refused her? They can't, she reassured herself.

She heard the gospel music from her mother's room and knew that the Sunday morning ritual had begun. She and her mother seldom went to church, but every Sunday they spent part of the day listening to gospel music or to a religious program on TV. Now her mother's favorite song was trumpeting through the house:

Lord, you don't have to move my mountains
.

Just give me the strength to climb
.

And, Lord, don't take away my stumbling block
,

But lead me all around
.

The music reinforced her feelings of self-doubt, and she went into her mother's room. Her mother was still in bed with magazines strewn about her.

“Come on in,” her mother said, patting the bed for Emma to join her.

“I'm not so clean, Mama! Let me wash up.”

“Oh, come on. You're all right.”

Emma, pleased that she was accepted as she was, lay on the bed and looked at the
Vogue Pattern
book her mother was holding in her hand.

“These are some of the dresses chosen for the debs,” her mother said. “We'll have to decide which you like best so it can be made.”

“You really think they're gonna choose me, Ma?”

“One ‘no' vote can keep you out. But it looks good in spite of that transfer. We're still working on it.”

“Now I really want to do it.”

“That transfer is the only thing that has me concerned. But I think we can beat that.”

The dresses varied in styles to suit slim or plump girls. Emma, a tall, perfect eight, had difficulty choosing. She could wear any of the styles.

“They are all pretty. I'll have to think about it, but right now I could go for the soft flowing one that has the trainlike effect attached at the shoulder; or the one with the hooped skirt and that pretty lace.

“I like the hooped skirt, too,” her mother said. “You'd look lovely in that. Sometimes I'm so proud of you, and then,” she looked at Emma and grinned, “I think you're hopeless.”

“Aw, Mama.”

“But most of the time you're a pretty good girl. Look in my closet. There's a box on the floor. For you.”

Emma's hands trembled as she ripped the tape off the box. She rummaged through the tissue and brought out a long, soft, cotton-knit nightshirt in her favorite shrimp pink. “Oh, Mama,” she cried, “just what I needed for Dee's slumber party.”

“I thought you'd like that. The minute I picked it, I could just see you in it, with the fragile gold chain and gold slipper that come with the deb invitation.”

Emma reached over and gave her mother a hug and kiss. With all the problems, she still had the best mother in the world. “You deserve breakfast in bed, and I'm gonna make it.” She moved out of the room to the rhythm of:

Oh, happy day, oh, happy day

When Jesus washed my sins away
.

Just as she finished preparing the tray to take to her mother's room, the doorbell rang. Who could that be? Her first thought was that it was a member of the Golden Slippers bringing news that she had been accepted.

The tradition was that members of the club notified each girl, individually, at the girl's home, at a chosen hour. All girls would get the word simultaneously, timed to the minute. The suspense was almost unbearable, so that, during the second week of November, every potential deb's heart stopped at the ring of her doorbell.

“I'll get it,” she called. Hurriedly she delivered the tray and rushed to the door. It was Marvin.

Oh, no. She was not ready for Marvin, not that early in the morning. Now she wished she had not listened to her mother and had had her shower. She had to let him in.

With the door cracked, she showed only her head. “Hi, give me a minute to run to my room, then you come in and make yourself comfortable while I get presentable, OK?

“It's Marvin, Mama,” she said on the way to her room.

When she returned to the living room in a warmup suit, he was sitting, beating out the rhythm of the gospel music on his thigh.

“Well, I doubt that you look any better,” he said. “I'd prefer seeing you as you look when you're ready for bed. Or, maybe in nothing.” He laughed.

“Aw, Marvin.” She lowered her head, embarrassed as always when he teased her in that way. “What are you doing over here so early?”

“I came to see if you got home all right.”

“Little you care. If you cared, you wouldn't have taken me there in the first place. Right?”

“Wrong. Because I care, baby, I want you to know everything about me. And I want to know everything about you.”

“There are some things I'd rather
not
know. Kali is one of them. I'm not the kind to love my rivals. Nor am I the kind to let you burn me and pretend it doesn't hurt.”

“She's no rival.”

“Well, she was putting down some heavy stuff—‘You can find your way in your sleep.' I was listening, all right.”

“Were you listening when I introduced you as
my lady
?”

Emma said nothing.

“I'm talking to you, woman. Were you listening?”

“That doesn't mean a thing. You let me come home in a taxi! Wait just a minute and I'll give you back the fare.” She rushed off to her room and returned with five dollars.

“No, thanks. My old man always told me if I took a lady out, I must see that she gets home, safe.”

“I'm sure your father didn't mean putting a girl in a taxi. Were you concerned about what your father said, or were you more interested in what was going down at the party?”

“Listen, Em.”

“Don't raise your voice. I don't want Mama to hear us.”

“No, you listen,” he said quietly. “I asked you, ‘How're you gonna get home?' And what did you say?
You
said, ‘I'll call a cab.' That was your decision and I took care of it.”

“What else could I have done?”

“You could have said,
‘You're taking me
.' I'd have had no other choice and I would have brought you home.”

“You think I believe that?” she said with controlled rage. “You can make a better case of messing up than anybody I know.”

“I'm not the son of a good lawyer for nothing.” He laughed. “You're something else when you lose your cool, you know that?” He took her hands and tried to bring her into his arms.

“No way.” She pushed him in the chest away from her. “I'm mad at you.”

“Emma,” her mother called from her room. “Did you offer Marvin some breakfast?”

“He doesn't want any.”

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Walsh.”

“Fix Marvin some breakfast,” her mother said.

Later, when she walked Marvin to the door, he said, “Thanks for a pleasant morning, and for a good breakfast. I'm looking forward to spending an evening with you and taking you to breakfast, soon.”

“I'm looking forward to that, too.”

He held her hands. “You glad I came?”

She nodded her head yes. She was glad that she had spent that time with him. But deep down under she knew something was missing. Suddenly she remembered her mother's words: “
Don't let yourself become accustomed to being grateful for nothing.
”