“Sissy still working at the department store, they done made her a manager, paying her an extra fifty cents an hour.”
“Ain’t that something,” Ozzie said, mouth full. His sister Sissy was the one person in his family light-skinned enough for a job in management. The rest of his family could only clean up the store after hours.
“Fannie finished beauty school. Got a job at a shop over on Wharton Street. Jonas, he working down at Mr. Timmy’s tailor shop. Boy can cut a suit just as fine as them ones Millard wearing up in Harlem.”
“What about John-John?”
Nettie sighed. “Running the streets with them hoodlums over on Oakford Street. You need to talk some sense in that boy. Else he’ll be dead or in jail.”
“I’ll get him right.” Ozzie pushed away his plate. Nettie kept up a steady flow of neighborhood gossip while she moved around the tiny kitchen, wiping down the stovetop and putting away the dishes.
“Big Otis been here?” Ozzie asked, hating the longing in his voice. He had heard only once from his father in the four years he had been gone. A letter asking Ozzie to wire him some money.
“I ain’t seen him for a few weeks. Last I heard, he was staying over in the Black Bottom.” Nettie cut him a slice of pie and put it in front of him. Then she grabbed a piece for herself and sat on the other side of the table.
“What about you, son? How was living in Germany? You ain’t fall in love with no white woman, did you?” She looked at him pointedly.
Ozzie hoped his face was as blank as he urged it to be when he shook his head. “Naw, Mama.”
“Good. ’Cause Melba’s son just got back from England, bringing pictures of two white-looking kids. Talking ’bout trying to get married and bring them here. She got the whole church praying for her son’s safety.”
Ozzie gulped. He would have done the same thing for Katja if he could have. The hole in his heart burned as he opened his mouth to confess it all to his mother, but she cut him off.
“You ain’t hot, dressed in that?” Nettie waved her hand over his uniform.
“No.”
She cocked her fork at him. “Bet you wanting to stay all dressed up for Rita.”
Ozzie blushed at Rita’s name.
“After all this time, you still holding a torch for her?” She chuckled.
“You seen her? How’s she doing?”
“Just fine. Got a fancy job now. Walk out of her house every morning looking like money.” She chuckled again. “She’ll be home ’round five. She come up the street like clockwork.”
Ozziewashot in his uniform. He could feel the sweat beads gathering across his chest, but he wanted to look important when Rita laid eyes on him.
“You right, I’ma go sit outside.”
Ozzie plucked his well-worn copy ofNative Sonby Richard Wright from the bookshelf in the front room and opened the screen door. As he took a seat on the top step, he heard a shrill, wailing meow from a stray cat coming from up the block. It sounded like the cat was in heat. Ozzie could understand the cat’s pain. He could barely keep his eyes on the book; each noise made his eyes dart up the street in search of Rita.
Then, like an apparition on the breeze, Ozzie saw Rita dressed in a white-and-blue gingham button-down dress cinched at the waist. Her hair was twisted off her neck, and she wore silver at her ears and throat. The few pictures she had sent him over the years had not done her justice. Man, she was fine enough to make a blind man cry.
“Ozzie?” she called, fanning herself. “That you?”
Ozzie was up and down the steps, and they moved toward each other like magnets. He nuzzled his nose in her neck, and she smelled like the same honeysuckle scent that had fragranced her letters.
“It’s good to see you, girl.” She was light in his arms as he lifted her off her feet and spun her, then he pulled her tight against his chest.
With her feet on the ground again, Rita took a step back while eyeing him. “You lookin’ damn good in that uniform. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
She palmed his chest. “Well, I wish I had known. I would have fried you up some pork chops.”
“There will be plenty of time for that.”
