Leaving: A Novel Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Family Tree

  Part One

  Chapter 1A

  Chapter 1B

  Chapter 1C

  Chapter 2A

  Chapter 2B

  Chapter 2C

  Chapter 3A

  Chapter 3B

  Chapter 3C

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7A

  Chapter 7B

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12A

  Chapter 12B

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two

  Chapter 1A

  Chapter 1B

  Chapter 1C

  Chapter 2A

  Chapter 2B

  Chapter 2C

  Chapter 3

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 1

  Part Four

  Works Cited

  Additional Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Praise for Leaving

  Copyright

  TO MY PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE:

  MY MOTHER, FATHER, WIFE, AND FRIENDS

  TO RUBY

  AND TO THE KIDS:

  MAY YOU KNOW THE RIVER

  SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD, A LONG WAY FROM MY HOME.

  —Traditional, author unknown

  THE END IS IN THE BEGINNING AND LIES FAR AHEAD.

  —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1A

  ON JUNE 19, 1959, Ruby Washington traveled through Texas on a bus from Norma, South Carolina, to Oakland, California, with her thirteen-year-old half brother, Love Easton Childers. They sat across from the toilet, the septic fumes souring the air. Ruby’s forehead rested against the hot window, and Easton, or Love E as Ruby alone could call him—which she pronounced “Lovey,” like an adoring wife—slept on her loose shoulder, his mouth open, bouncing with the bus over the highway. Even in sleep, he brushed at his cheek with his fingertips as if shooing away a persistent fly.

  Ruby pulled her brother’s hand from his face and held it down in her lap. At twenty-one, she was a large woman. She’d always been big-boned with meaty hips and shoulders, a body shaped like an acoustic guitar. She watched a stretch of fence alongside the highway, small purple and yellow flowers growing against the lower rung of wire. A red-tailed hawk lifted itself from one of the posts and flew over the farmland, then circled smoothly above the houses and gentle hills. She followed the hawk with her eyes, tilting her head and feeling every turn of its wings as it sailed across all that luxurious space.

  The bus hit a pothole and Ruby held both hands on her stomach. She waited, holding her breath. She’d never heard of a baby being shaken loose from a bumpy ride, but already her life had been filled with things she’d never heard of happening to anyone else. It wasn’t even a baby yet, just a kidney bean inside her, but Ruby felt her as much as a full-grown baby girl. She imagined her with Ronald’s dark eyes and his long, beautiful lashes. The sadness started to grip her again in her belly. Then the tightness of anger spread through her chest. There are certain things people never imagine living without, and faced with their loss, their minds make up ways to circumnavigate the truth of their senses, inventing conspiracies or forgotten clues. It had been so dark when they’d taken him away; she’d had to leave town before the funeral; the paper had talked about sending him to Charleston. She preferred to believe in false hope rather than despair. She had decided it was her God-given duty.

  She looked out the window and searched for the hawk again. It was climbing higher into the clouds, and as she watched, it swooped out of sight. When it was gone, she realized how tightly her teeth were clamped together, and she forced herself to breathe out a steady, circular stream of air. She had to forget. For she feared that the tightness and pain of memory would suffocate her child right there inside her.

  So she told a story. She put her hand on Easton’s hair and spoke to him softly:

  “Love E, didn I ever tell you ’bout dat boy who gon chasin de angels?”

  Easton shook his head and kept his eyes closed. He spoke English only as Ronald had taught him, what he called “News English,” but Ruby’s stories in her own voice were like her soft lap to rest his mind into.

  “Well he wasn no fool, dis boy. He foun hisself a fisbin net an a fishin hook an he was waitin up in de tree for de angels to pass on by. He knew dem angels has to come by soon fo his mama who jus pass on dat night. Well de firs angel dat come on by fell right into his trap an he scoop him up wit his net. You listnin to me?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Well de angel had to give him wishes. ‘I know what you want,’ say de angel. ‘You want fo me to bring yo mama back to life.’

  “‘No,’ say de boy. ‘I want a great big castle.’ An wit a clap a lightnin he had a big ole castle. Den he aks for all de money in de worl, an wit a clap a lightnin a whole hill a money an gole rise up.

  “‘Now dis is yo las wish,’ say de angel. ‘I know you got to want fo me to bring yo mama back to life.’

  “‘No,’ say de boy.

  “‘Well what you want den? Tell me quick, so I can go on ’bout my regular business.’

  “‘Well,’ say de boy. ‘I want you to make me White.’

  “‘Make you White?’

  “‘Yes.’

  “‘You sure dat’s what you want, more den bring yo mama back to life?’

  “‘Yes,’ say de boy. ‘Now make me White.’

  “‘Alright,’ say de angel.

  “De boy hold his arm up to his face to watch his skin turn. A clap a lightnin wen off, an he watch his arm fo his color to change. He waited, but nothin happen. De boy look up at de angel and yell, ‘You got to keep yo promise, you an angel.’ But den he see somethin movin round de corner of de house. Out from a bush step his mama, standin tall and mean as a mountain lion, walkin at de boy like she gonna et him up. Well de boy gone jus ’bout out a his mine.

  “‘But you promised to make me White,’ yell de boy. He jump out the tree and start to run away.

  “‘I sure did,’ say de angel. ‘An jus look at yo’self, you as white as a sheet.’” Ruby shook her head and laughed, but Easton had fallen asleep again.

  She looked at her half brother drooling a little on her sleeve. He was now her responsibility. And she was glad for it, for that distraction, and for someone who could remind her, even in his sleepy silence, that she was not alone with her memories.

  She’d never left South Carolina before, never gone farther than fifty-three miles to Charleston—and there only once, when she was seven, to see a parade for her real papa, who supposedly hadn’t come home from the war in Europe. Just as she was getting to understand how there could be a parade for someone who didn’t show up to the parade, she found out that he had come back after all, just not back to them. There was no telling what kind of man her real papa, Papa Corbet, would be, but if he beat Love E like Papa Samuel had, she promised herself that she’d take him away. They could always try to live on their own in California.

  * * *

  THEY PULLED INTO the Oakland Greyhou
nd station at ten in the morning. As Ruby sat on a bench and waited for the driver to fetch baggage, she unfolded a black bandanna in her lap, shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand, and counted it again: forty-seven dollars. All the money they’d earned from the last batch of dresses. Among the bills was a slip of paper with her father’s address and a phone number for the West Oakland Army Base.

  Easton played cards with a boy from the bus. Ignoring all the colored children, Easton had chosen to play with this White boy on the ride over, even though he hadn’t known crazy eights and Easton hadn’t known gin. They’d settled on hearts, which Easton hadn’t known either, but the boy taught him well enough to win two out of five hands.

  The boy’s mother came over and picked her son up by the wrist.

  “All right, that’s plenty.” She brushed off his pants, licked two of her fingers, wet back his hair, and pulled him away to stand among the adults. Easton wandered back to Ruby, who was watching for the trunk they’d brought.

  “I thought your father was killed in the war,” he said to his half-sister. He brushed his right cheek with his fingertips.

  “I guess he ain’t dead no more.” She scooted over on the carved wooden bench and patted it for Easton to come sit next to her.

  “Is your father big?” he asked.

  “I don’t recollect.”

  “Does he scold with a switch?”

  “You find out soon enough.”

  Easton watched his friend leave with his mother and father.

  “They ours,” Ruby said, pointing to a dark green trunk. “Help me carry it.” Inside the trunk were all the belongings they could fit for both of them, including the sewing machine. They carried the trunk out front and convinced a cabby to take them for a dollar.

  On the drive, they passed through the heart of West Oakland. Seventh Street was alive with people—colored people. Ruby had never seen so many finely dressed men, bustling along the street in their double-breasted jackets, and women with flowered hats (and some in fur coats!) standing in the doorways of shops just as if they owned them. Bright red trolley cars ran down the middle of the street in both directions. On either side were stores packed shoulder to shoulder in the brick buildings. Every shop had a striped awning. Long vertical signs jutted out from their facades with bold names announcing their services and proprietors: Borden’s Candy and Ice Cream, Adeline Station Hotel, GLOW, Dine and Dance at Slim Jenkins’ Supper Club. There were furniture stores and barbershops, beauty salons and soda fountains, all patronized by Negroes and, as far as she could tell, all run by Negroes too. There were Negro shoe-shine boys shining Negroes’ shoes, white-jacketed Negro pharmacists in the pharmacy, and Negro lawyers sitting behind their desks in the window-front law offices; it was like the movies, but everybody had turned colored.

  “Tremendous,” Easton said, his favorite of Ronald’s words. He pressed his finger up against the window. The produce bins on the sidewalk were piled high with oranges, striped watermelons, apples, grapes, plums, and peaches. “I bet those peaches came from South Carolina. Johnston is the peach capital of the world, you know?”

  “That fruit might have come from China,” said the cabby. “You’re in a port town, man. You think it’s fancy now, you should have seen it before the bridge. The ferries used to cross to the city from here, so everyone came on through town. The trains were running and we were still building ships over at Moore’s. Roast beef and pork chops every night, man.” He stretched his arm across the top of the seat as if relaxing after a good meal. “Then come the airplanes and there’s no need for the Pullman porters either. Trust me, man, people don’t spend the way they used to. Some of the shops already moved out.”

  He turned the cab off Seventh Street and headed away from the Southern Pacific train yards. “Then they went and built this monster-ugly contraption.” He pointed up toward a freeway overpass. “Who can blame them wealthier folk for leaving, the way things are getting.”

  They turned one block north of the freeway. “This here is your street, man, Cranston Avenue—still a nice street. Lots of these blocks were wiped out for the housing project. I know a woman who, to this day, still comes back and stares through the fence to where her house used to be.” The cabby stopped and helped them unload. “They didn’t touch certain streets, but even the ones spared can’t never be the same. Lost that sense of security.”

  The cabby left Ruby and Easton staring at the house from the sidewalk, their green trunk in front of them. It was a Victorian, two stories high, with a cellar level below the stairs and a dark red coat of paint, like the Palmers’ barn in Norma. Burgundy lace curtains hung in all the windows, and an American flag stuck out from the side of the black mailbox. Ruby looked down at the address on the paper and then up and down the block. The rest of the houses on the street were just as pretty and brilliant, each one painted its own colorful personality—bright pink, yellow, turquoise.

  An older White man dressed in all black with a black hat and long curly black hair streaming down his cheeks nodded to them, then walked up the steps to the house. He ate fleshy purple grapes and spit the seeds out onto the lawn as he opened the door and went inside.

  “It looks like your father doesn’t live here anymore,” Easton said.

  “Maybe he be de lanlord.”

  “Maybe we should go over to the army base.”

  “How we gonna get a cab here?”

  “You can stay with the trunk and I’ll run to that main street.”

  “Maybe dis ain’t de right block.”

  The front door opened again and out stepped a thin, middle-aged man with mahogany-brown skin. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses and a brown derby cap and smoked a pipe.

  “May I help you?”

  “We jus lookin at your pretty house,” said Ruby. Her heart pounded so fast that she rested her hand on her brother’s shoulder to steady herself.

  The man turned and looked up at his home. “Yep. This here’s a GI Bill.”

  Easton considered the house carefully, as if he were going to draw it: the front two windows of the second story looked like square eyes facing the street and the bottom bay window like a mouth with the stairs as a tongue hanging out of the left side.

  “How come you named your house Bill?” he asked.

  “Well that’s a good question. You hear that, Saul?” He turned and looked back into the house. “He asks why I named this house GI Bill.”

  “Well,” a voice came from inside, “it’s because the government gives you the house and then they send you a bill for it.” The man with the pipe laughed.

  “Well, he is a pretty house, sir,” Ruby said. “Thank you for lettin us look at him.”

  “He’s even prettier on the inside,” the man said. “You come take a look.”

  Ruby and Easton didn’t move. The man took off his cap and wiped his forehead with his arm.

  “Entrez vous, mes enfants,” he said. He turned and walked back into the house, leaving the door open. “And bring your trunk on in with you. We can’t have your mama’s trunk gettin all left out in the weather.”

  CHAPTER 1B

  SEPTEMBER 1973

  LIDA DIDN’T USE an alarm clock on the first day of seventh grade. Too loud. She woke up on her own, from a little pocket of fear that kept something alert in her at all times.

  “Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” she whispered, as she did every morning before moving a muscle, then crawled under her sheets and came out at the bottom end. She sat up and saw the new dress that Ruby, her mother, had sewn for her—canary yellow with a white lace collar, lying across the dark green trunk at the foot of her bed. She stayed in her nightgown, folded the dress over her arm, and tiptoed down the hallway. Ruby had already gone to work and Lida crept past her uncle Easton’s door.

  “Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” she prayed silently. There were days when he woke up at the sound of a cough and days he slept through a car crash. The uncertainty kept her perpetually on edge.

  So
as not to wake him, she had everything she needed in the first-floor bathroom. For weeks now she’d transferred her toiletries downstairs one by one—toothbrush, hairbrush, Vaseline—pretending to have just absentmindedly left them there.

  She walked gently down the stairs, pausing after each step. At the bottom of the staircase, she turned to the wooden ball atop the handrail. She bent down and, taking the deep mahogany sphere in both hands as if it were a baby’s head, licked the wood twice, from middle to top. It tasted waxy and bitter, but the more bitter and tormenting, the better. She let out her breath, and although she’d made it downstairs, she held her arms close to her body. She went into the bathroom, closed the door, and washed her face with lavender soap, beginning in a circular motion on her forehead and then moving counterclockwise. She showered only in the evenings, when her mother was home and Easton was out. She finished soaping, then rinsed and looked in the mirror at all the ways her face had failed her: hundreds of little bumps on her stone-black forehead, her nose too wide, her lashes too long. He was right—she was too dark and ugly. She pulled the kerchief off her head and applied a coat of Vaseline to her hair.

  When she was done fixing up, Lida poured herself a bowl of cornflakes and ate alone at the dining room table, taking special care to lay out the red cloth place mat so the dish wouldn’t knock loudly against the table. She let the flakes soak in the milk until they were soggy and didn’t crunch; then she ate slowly—listening.

  As she chewed, she looked at the sepia photographs on the living room wall: Grandma Elise, whom she’d never met, and Grandpa Corbet, whom she couldn’t remember meeting, in his army uniform, half smiling, half looking at something in the background. He’d died when Lida was only five, and he was young in that picture, so when Lida imagined her father, Ronald, she mostly imagined that picture of Corbet.

  She cleared her dish, washed it, and put the place mat back in the drawer; she erased all signs of herself, nothing to make him think of her, nothing to make it her fault if he did.

  She took the quarter for the bus off the shiny oak vanity and hopped to the doormat on one socked foot as quietly as possible, though she couldn’t help but make a hollow thudding. This last test was obligatory now that she was nearly out, to prove that she deserved to make it.