Page 120 of Meet Me in the Garden

“The Negro store owners are putting signs up and people are mostly leaving their places alone. We’re going after the businesses that sell rotten food, sell cheap goods marked up just because there’s no other option in the neighborhood. No one’s trying to hurt an old colored man’s livelihood.”

Just before daybreak, Al and Adele head down to sleep in my studio. Nathalie and Elizabeth share the pullout bed. The boys and Lionel carve out spaces in the living room, on the sofa and the floor. When we wake in the late morning, Ginny and Adele and I make a triple batch of banana muffins, a pot of grits, pork links.

I stare at Lionel all through breakfast. He’s grown a mustache. Otherwise, he’s just as he used to be. Al and Adele flank him. Nathalie sits at his feet, uses his legs as a backrest. As soon as we finish eating, Clément leads him out to the coop.

I take inventory of my cupboards, the refrigerator. “We’re going to need more groceries,” I say as they come back in. “I should have thought of that sooner.”

“I saw a store that’s still open,” Clément says.

“I can go out and get them,” Lionel says. He studies me, a smile forming.

“What?”

“I’m just wondering. Does it make you feelany kind of way? That I can go out and you can’t?”

I smile back. “It sure does.” Adele and Ginny and I sit at the kitchentable and discuss what we’ll cook, make Lionel a list for the store, and as soon as he drops off the groceries we get started. As we cook, through the window, I see Nathalie on the patio, Delphine’s letter in her hands. I stop chopping greens when she comes back in, watch her in case she wants to talk. She tucks the envelope back by the phone.

“Her handwriting,” she says. “It’s very elegant.” I wait. She bites her lip. Heads to her room and shuts the door.

Time loses meaning. All day, people come and go. We’re watching TV or we’re sleeping or we’re fixing a meal at the stove or we’re talking with somebody about Selma or the best recipe for pie crusts or Coltrane or the repeal of the housing act or the Beatles. Sometimes it’s just Nathalie and Adele and Ginny and me at home. Sometimes the rooms are so full there’s nowhere to sit but the floor. Smoke’s thick in my throat, in my hair. Ash covers the garden steps and the patio table and the windowsills. I make coffee for the young people in my living room. Crack a dozen eggs and whisk them in a bowl. Ginny’s checking injuries. Rudy has a cut on his forehead and for a split second his face turns into Lionel’s, eighteen in the blue house, and I gasp and Rudy says, “Auntie O, it’s not so bad,” and he’s himself again, and it’s only a small cut, and I shake it off.

It becomes harder for Lionel and Al and the others to get in and out of the area. Trenches are dug, police barricades erected. The lieutenant governor and Chief Parker call in the National Guard. Desmond and Clément see them riding in with their rifles and bayonets, rush to the house to tell us. Rudy and Paul and Elizabeth reach for their shoes. Adele rises.

“Children, it’s enough now,” she says. “They’re arresting colored people by the hundreds. I can’t have you going to jail. And God forbid, I don’t want you dying out there.”

“I’d rather die here than in Vietnam,” Rudy says.

“I’d rather that you stay alive.”

“I agree,” I say to Clément. “I know this is important. You’ve already been part of it. Let’s just stay together, keep an eye on the news, see what happens tonight.”

But we lose the fight. The boys leave, Elizabeth, too, and Al and Lionelgo with them. Soon it’s just Nathalie and Ginny and Adele and me again. We sit for a little while, not cooking or cleaning or watching the news. Adele says, “Remember how Maman told me I undid a century’s worth of progress for the family when I married Al? She told me I was selfish. Those things she used to say about Rudy, about keeping him out of the sun.”

“It was horrible.”

“How could she care about something so shallow?” Nathalie asks. “I mean I understand this country. But still, it’s wrong. Who wouldn’t love Uncle Al?”

“Itiswrong,” I say.

Nathalie goes into her old room, stays there for a long time. When she emerges again later, she turns off the television, midbroadcast. “Am I colored?” she asks. The three of us stare at her. “I’m serious,” she says. “Ginnyhas a darker complexion than I do.”

I shift my weight on the sofa, looking at her. Sea-green eyes. Fair with a smattering of freckles. Dark-brown hair, just barely wavy, sun-lightened at the tips. I say, “You don’tlookcolored, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Iknowhow I look. How I look is the reason I can’t be out there with my own brother and my own cousins fighting for my community.”

Ginny says, “Your brother, your cousins, your community. You’re answering your own question. Aren’t you?”

“But what if I know who I am but the world can’t see it?” I smile. “What?”she says. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing. It’s just, that’s my life, too. I understand you completely. That’s all.” She’s worked up, her hands in fists. I say, “You wouldn’t have been born in LA if your mother wasn’t colored. If she were white, she and Bill would have gotten married back in New Orleans and led a completely different life. And when Delphine agreed to pass as white here… She could get away with it, but it took a lot from her. Because it was a denial, a concealment of who she was. Whether you look colored or not, Delphine’s who gave birth to you, and she’s colored whethershelooks it or not. It’s part of who you are. Why you’re here, in LA, living the life you have.”

That night, when the group of them gets home, they sit us down and tell us that a twenty-one-year-old colored man named Leon Posey died. He’d stepped outside a barbershop to see the commotion when the police began shooting. “For all the news is saying about us,” Clément says, “howsavagelyNegroes are beating white people, howlawlesswe are, here’s the first death. A colored man at the hands of the LAPD.”

Lionel’s been solemn, stationed by the door. After a time, he takes the spot on the sofa next to Ginny and says, “Loitering. Drunkenness. Suspicious character. Being dangerous—whatever the hell that means.”

“What is this?” Ginny asks.

“Reasons for my arrests. From back home.” He rubs his forehead, laces his fingers together. “I know the mood’s already heavy tonight. But do y’all mind if I continue?” Everyone nods, tells him to go ahead. “No honest means of employment. Suspicions of robbery. Take note it’s onlysuspicions. As far as I know, no one was actually robbed. Gambling with cards for money. That one really happened, I’ll give them that. Disturbing the peace. No clue how, but the good officer said it so it must be true. There was a time…” He falters. Clears his throat. “There was a time when I thought for sure I was going to die by the hands of the police.”