High cheekbones and a broad forehead carried my wide nose in a way that somehow made me look serious all the time. Black don’t crack, but it does sag with years, gravity, and stress. Those three factors know no race, color, or creed.
Maybe if I hadn’t divorced Eric…
Sweat beaded around my receding hairline, reminding me that the house hadn’t been occupied in nearly a week and the air-conditioning had been turned off. At a little under two thousand square feet, it wouldn’t take long to reach a comfortable temperature in the house.
I made my way through the primary unit’s living room, stepping over an area rug with curled edges.
Continuing on, I crossed into what used to be the main hallway but was now in the renter’s unit. The walls on this side had also been painted a neutral grayish-white color. They were bare, but in my mind’s eye, I could still see faded photographs of relatives I had not thought about in years. I couldn’t help but pause at each one, memories flooding in to welcome me back to Grandma Jewel’s house.
This was where I encountered my first problem: The person with hot flashes needs control of the AC. I made a note-to-self about ordering a personal fan to mitigate this oversight.
With the gentle push of a button and a hopeful click of the thermostat, the system hummed to life, a promise of relief soon to come. I continued surveying the house, the air from the vents beginning to stir, inviting the curtains into a lazy dance.
Two thousand square feet was about half the size of our home in Austin. The kids had their side of the house, Eric and I had ours. “Master suite,” they called it back then, before folks started wakingup to Black history and women’s history more. When I’d begun looking at homes in the city, just before I announced my intent to divorce Eric, I noticed they called the main bedroom “primary” now. It’s a step in the right direction, if you ask me. There’s much to be said about changing a name, which was why I decided to return to my maiden name, Hicks, in the divorce.
Joyce Marietta Hicks. Formerly known as Joyce Jackson through the biggest chunk of my life. My married name had a nice ring to it, I have to say: Mrs. Jackson. Eric and Joyce Jackson; it’s proper to say the man’s name first, I was taught.
Anyway, when I’d listed the other half of the incomplete duplex for rent, I made sure to call it the “secondary” unit. And at the time, I’d thought it would be completely separate, which was why I could charge a pretty penny, by Robin Creek standards. But now that my new tenant would be sharing my kitchen and the laundry room—at least for now—I’d had to let the previous signee out of the contract, re-advertise in the local paper with the reduced price, and lower my standards to get somebody who wasn’t as particular as me.
Gabriella Santos.
I wondered if she was Mexican. And then I wondered why I wondered. Because the same way I appreciate the Realtors changing the name from “master” to “primary,” I’d like to think someone would welcome me despite whatever reservations society and/or their entire family had taught them to think about people who looked different from them.
Letting go goes a long way, and it goes both ways.
Besides, I was already well-versed in letting go, seeing as I’d let go of a thirty-year marriage. Living next to Gabriella couldn’t be any worse than living parallel to Eric. He and I both beingBlack, making vows, and raising kids hadn’t made us stick together forever, clearly.
“Yoo-hoo!” a voice rang from the front of the house, along with a gentle rap on the screen door.
Instinctively, I pressed down the front of my cotton skirt and re-fluffed the bottom of my dolman shirt to better camouflage my stomach.
“I see your fancy car!” the visitor announced. Her shadow tilted to the right, along with her body, as she attempted to look inside the house.
Nosy folk gon’ be nosy; it’s in their blood. The only way to deal with them is to stay polite and keep distance between you and them.
“Morning,” I said, pulling the main door closed behind me and stepping onto the porch and into her personal space at the same time, effectively shutting off her view of my newly remodeled home and pushing her back with my midsection.
It’s not that I don’t like people—I do. It’s the small talk that I don’t like. And being married to Eric came with wheelbarrows full of shallow banter at dinners and conferences and fundraisers where technically you didn’t have to donate. But if you didn’t, you wouldn’t get a personal invitation to the private luncheon with the headmaster of the exclusive school where you wanted your kids to go. And then your child would be in the lotteryfor realfor real, just another number like all the other folks without connections.
That was how it worked in the city, in wife-of-a-city-engineer world. You laughed and smiled and played nice because it was a giant game of chess.
In the country, it wasn’t so much a game. It was more a slow, deliberate waltz.
This woman standing on my porch was the mailman. Mailperson, I should say, and I did recognize her, but I couldn’t imagine that the same woman who had brought mail to this house when I was a child still held the same position and same route.
Then again, how many paths to promotion or delivery routes could have been open in Robin Creek?
She squinted, and suddenly I noticed that neither the glasses on her nose nor the wig on her head were sitting quite right. I wanted to help her out, push them up a little. But I knew better.
“You Miss Jewel’s grandbaby? Charlie’s daughter?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied softly, enunciating respectfully, the way I’d been taught to show address to my elders. “I used to come here every summer.”
She looked me up and down, appraising me, which I understood meant she was also measuring me against all that the Hicks name meant in this town. Fine, upstanding folk. I felt like I’d shrunk five inches at the mention of my grandmother and my father, and with the mailwoman’s fake eyelashes—thick as caterpillars—sweeping over me.
I am a grown woman, I chanted to myself until my shoulders drew back and returned me to my actual height. “Yes. I’m Joyce Hicks.”
“Li’l Joy?”
