The Red Rose Box (14 page)

I took the phone from her hand. “Hi, Gramma.”

“Hi, Leah Jean. Finally got some of the phone lines back up,” Gramma said. “Sulphur's still a mess. Lord have mercy ... I miss y'all.” It sounded like she was about to cry.

“I miss you too, Gramma,” I said.

Ruth grabbed at the phone. “I wanna talk some more!”

“Wait!” I replied and kept talking. “We start school on Monday and we went to the library and we saw
Davy Crockett
and Mrs. Pittman is gonna take us to Mexico so she can get something with a worm in it because she said that Ruth is bout to drive her outta her mind.”

Gramma laughed and said, “Sounds like y'all is fine ... just fine. Now let me talk to Ruth a little bit. It's late here. Good night, Leah.”

“Good night, Gramma,” I said and handed the phone to Ruth.

 

 

 

M
onday morning. The first day of school. I was nervous. Aunt Olivia walked us to school, lunch boxes in our hands, ribbons in our hair, brown-and-white saddle shoes on our feet.

It was a two-story redbrick building and I felt tied up inside as I entered my classroom and took a seat. I was in the sixth grade, Ruth fifth.

The teacher had red hair, freckles, and fat ankles. Her name was Mrs. Larson and she wore a smile. Around me sat children of every color. We each had our own desk and our own books. The desks were clean and the books looked new. It wasn't like Sulphur, where I'd shared an old desk and torn books with two, sometimes three others. Everyone was wearing shoes and what looked like new clothes. I thought about Mrs. Redcotton, remembering how she always called me Leah Jean.

Mrs. Larson had the new students tell about where they were from. She said that most people in Los Angeles were from somewhere else. Donna Peterson, a girl with yellow hair, was first. She said she was from Minnesota, where it snowed a lot. She said she liked to ice-skate, that she had two brothers, and that her father was an airplane pilot. Everyone in the class was asked to welcome her. They said, “Welcome, Donna!”

Then it was my turn. I stood and said, “My name is Leah Jean Hopper and I'm from Sulphur, Louisiana. I came to Los Angeles to live with my uncle and aunt because my mama and daddy died in a hurricane. I have one sister whose name is Ruth. She's in the fifth grade. I have a dog whose name is Hot.”

Mrs. Larson asked me, “Do you like Los Angeles, Leah?”

I replied, “Yes ma'am.” I wanted to tell her to call me Leah Jean but I didn't.

Everyone in the classroom said, “Welcome, Leah!”

I ate lunch with Ruth, Donna Peterson, and a colored girl from my class whose name was Michelle Jordan. Michelle Jordan wore pink lipstick and a brassiere that you could see through her white cotton shirt. She was light brown with green eyes. She was the sort of girl boys hover around like bees collecting nectar.

After lunch, Mrs. Larson wrote arithmetic problems on the blackboard. I copied them on my paper and took a deep breath. I looked around the room, watching, wondering if these boys and girls were all smarter than me. I looked at my paper and began to write my answers, remembering that Mrs. Redcotton had said that I was smart enough. Smart enough.

 

 

 

J
ust as Mrs. Pittman had promised, Saturday afternoon found us staring at the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica Pier, sipping Coca-Cola, watching seagulls fly.

I told Mrs. Pittman, “The place where the ocean meets the sky is called the horizon.”

“The horizon ... is that so?” she replied, looking out over the waves. The gulls filled a moment of silence with their song and then she said, “I'm goin to the movies with my sister tomorrow, gonna see
The Seven Year Itch
with Marilyn Monroe.”

We walked along the pier back toward the beach, took off our shoes, and walked to the water's edge. We made our footprints in wet sand and signed our names beneath them, just like the ones at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. We walked south toward Venice Beach and by the time we walked back, the tide had come in and erased our trail. We ran up toward the water, letting it chase us, smiling all the while. Then we sat and watched the sun disappear to less than half, orange and glowing.

“Bout time for supper,” Mrs. Pittman said as she dusted the sand from her feet. She put her shoes on and stood up.

Ruth and I put on our shoes and followed her to the car.

We drove down Pico Boulevard. I was kneeling in the backseat, looking toward the ocean. I turned around and asked, “How come the sun is always in a ball and the moon is always changing?”

Mrs. Pittman answered, “Because that's the way God made the world. Soon as you get in, best take a bath because you both smell like dead fiddler crabs tangled up with seaweed. Stinky.”

I said, “No such thing as a fiddler crab.”

“Sure is, play you a tune, you listen hard enuf.”

The car pulled to a stop in front of our house and we got out. The lights in the house were on and Aunt Olivia's car was parked behind Uncle Bill's in the driveway. Mrs. Pittman said, “G'night,” drove off, and was gone.

Gilbert Martinez was standing outside. He walked toward me and handed me a letter. “Hi, Leah.... Hi, Ruth.”

I took the letter from his hand. “Hi, Gilbert.”

Ruth stuck her tongue out at him. He went back to his house, and we opened the gate and walked into our yard.

“What's that, some kinda love letter?” Ruth tried to grab it from my hand.

“Stoppit, Ruth.” I pushed her hand away.

The front door was unlocked. I opened it and smelled chili cooking. Aunt Olivia hardly ever cooked, saying she didn't have a talent for it, and I wondered what it would taste like. Uncle Bill looked up from his paper, smiled, and said, “Good evenin, Leah ... Ruth.”

“Evenin, Uncle Bill,” we replied.

I walked up the stairs, holding the letter, Ruth behind me. I heard bathwater running.

Ruth said, “Olivia must have smelled us coming.”

I told her, “No one can smell like that except Hank De Leon when a possum's nearby.”

Olivia turned off the bathwater, peeked from behind Ruth's bathroom door, and smiled. “Nice day?”

We replied, “Yes ma'am.”

“After you get your bath, come downstairs and get some chili and crackers.”

“Yes ma'am,” we said again.

I went to my room, locked the door, and opened the letter. It said,

It was my first love letter. I got a chair, opened the closet door, reached up high for my red rose box, and took it down. I opened it, looked at the picture of Mama and Daddy, emptied my pockets of the four seashells I'd been carrying most of the day, put the letter and the shells in the box, decided not to cry on a Saturday night, and wondered what happens to swallowed tears.

I locked the box, put it away, and got undressed. I sank into the tub, put my head under the water, and washed my hair with Ivory soap like Mama used to. The sweetness of the soap, like the smell of perfume, brought a smile to my insides and I thought, Mama wouldn't want me to be a sad girl.

It felt like I was a million miles from Sulphur and crayfish, cotton fields and hand-me-down clothes, a one-room schoolhouse, segregation, and Jim Crow. But I knew one thing. I knew that I would gladly give up this new comfort and freedom to be in my mama's arms, to feel the tenderness in my daddy's touch one more time.

 

 

 

M
ichelle Jordan took a bite from her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and said, “We're the three prettiest girls in class.”

Donna replied, “I know.”

I looked at them as they sipped chocolate milk from the bottles. They were pretty, I was sure of that, but I wondered if I was.

“I'm gonna be a teacher, like Mrs. Larson,” I said.

“I'm gonna be a movie star,” Michelle announced.

Donna said, “I'm gonna be a mother, like my mother.”

“Oh,” I said. “My mama was a mother but she took care of Miss Lilly too.”

“Like a nurse?” Michelle asked.

“No, like a maid,” I replied. “Me and Ruth used to wash Miss Lilly's clothes every Saturday and she paid us both a dime.”

“We have a maid. Her name is Hattie,” Donna said.

“Is she colored?” Michelle asked.

“Yes, she's colored,” Donna replied.

“All maids are colored,” I said.

“No they aren't,” Donna said. “My mother knows a lady who lives in Beverly Hills and her maid is German.”

I replied, “Oh.” I couldn't think of anything else to say. I looked at Michelle. She took another bite from her sandwich. Silence.

Someone kicked a red ball across the playground and it landed at my feet. I put down my lunch, stood, and picked up the ball. I socked it hard to the boy who had sent it flying and he caught it. I sat down to finish my lunch.

Michelle took one last sip of milk, reached in her pocketbook, took out her lipstick, and painted her lips pale pink. The movie star.

I looked at Donna and Michelle. I remembered Penny Adams and Emma Snow and I felt out of place with these girls who had never walked to school barefoot on dirt roads, wearing pickaninny braids or hand-me-down clothes.

The days and weeks passed and red and gold leaves fell from the branches of the few trees that would sit naked through the California winter.

Mrs. Pittman and I were alone in the kitchen on a rainy Thursday afternoon and I looked through the window at a sparrow that had found shelter under the red tiles of the roof of the house next door, playing hide-and-seek with the raindrops.

“Do you have a husband?” I asked.

Mrs. Pittman dropped neck bones into the iron pot with the black-eyed peas, put the top on the pot, and sat down like she was tired. She slipped her shoes off, put her feet up, and said, “Had me a husband once, thought he was the best thing since the radio and Nat King Cole. He got on a train one day, never heard from him since. Only thing he left was a yellow tie. Still got that tie just to remind me that ain't nuthin as good as the radio and Nat King Cole.”

We sat there, silent, until the pot boiled over.

 

 

 

R
uth stayed after school one day, practicing for a play. I walked home alone and the rain came, little more than a mist. I liked the feel of it, the taste of the damp air. Right then, I was back in Sulphur, expecting to see Mama's face in the kitchen window, waiting on her girls. Instead, Hot ran up to me, dancing around my feet like he was doing the jitterbug.

Mrs. Martinez called from her front door, “Leah! It's cold ...
muy frío
... I just made some meatball soup ...
albóndigas
and some tamales. Would you like to have some? You are welcome.”

I hoped Gilbert was home as I opened her gate and entered their house.

“Gilberto ... Gilbert is not home. He's on the baseball team... the shortstop. Today he has practice, even in this weather.” Mrs. Martinez closed the door behind me. Their house was warm, the fireplace lit. “Put your books down and sit here by the fire.” I sat down and she placed a shawl around my shoulders.

Chili pranced over to where I was sitting, sniffed my feet, and followed Mrs. Martinez into the kitchen. The smell of the soup and tamales made my mouth water. I looked around their house. Two green parakeets sat on a perch in a silver birdcage.