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Authors: Jacqueline E. Luckett
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the only time that
anyone would label Randall peaceful. If she is awake, when he lies motionless in the middle of the night like this, Lena often
pokes his shoulder, his neck, his thigh in anticipation of the slightest movement: proof he is still alive and well. Half-open
eyes tell Lena he is somewhere between dream and arousal.
Randall tugs her close, tickles her with his tongue in a new place, and she gasps from the sensation. They blend together
in their familiar way. She surrenders to his touch, the bristle of his mustache, a hint of musk oil. There is no urgency to
his movement, yet he comes swiftly, leaving Lena wanting more.
Chapter 6
L ulu and John Henry’s dream house looks the same as the day they bought it in 1965. The house is painted a pale color somewhere
between beige and rust; a lamp that switches on at 4:30 p.m. and off at 7:30 a.m. every spring, summer, winter, and fall.
Year round Christmas lights, more fragments than bulbs, loop under the eaves and around the three-sided bay window that dominates
the front of the house.
Whenever Bobbie and Lena complained of how embarrassed they were by the lights and the hideous, old-fashioned paint, John
Henry told them he didn’t have a problem with change as long as it stayed away from him. The biggest change he’d made in his
life, he told his daughters every time, was coming to California, and, since he wasn’t a risk taker, he saw no need to push
his luck.
“Lulu? You in the backyard?” Lena ducks around the low branches of the California oak where she and Bobbie always wanted John
Henry to build a tree house. The limbs of snowball hydrangeas straggle over the path; low pink azaleas, in ironic harmony
with the painted red cement, ramble below. Two garbage cans filled with dead leaves sit in the middle of the path. This Wednesday,
like every Wednesday of the eighteen months since John Henry passed, Lena feels like she has become her father. She lugs the
trash to the curb where neighbors’ cans jaggedly line the street up one side and down the other like whole notes in a measure
of music.
Once done, she heads for the backyard. The yard that used to be John Henry’s pride and joy is unkempt in a way that shocks
this daughter of parents once so fastidious: overgrown hedges, scraggly lawn, brown spots on camellia leaves, wiry rose bushes;
an apple tree branch hangs doggedly parallel to its trunk.
Lulu’s posture is effortlessly straight-backed. She holds a tarnished brass nozzle attached to a green-striped garden hose
in her left hand and listens intently to someone’s conversation on the other end of the cell phone squeezed between her right
ear and shoulder. The bluish rinse that Lulu tints her thin, curly afro with glistens in the sun. Not one hair on her head
is out of place, no wrinkles in her blouse, not a drop of water on her pants. Lena can’t help but smile at how beautiful her
mother still is, how the color of her clothes warms her skin.
Phone still in place, Lulu holds two conversations at the same time. “Tell me your
husband
didn’t see you looking like that? At least you could’ve put on lipstick.” Lulu never goes without her trademark lipstick.
Today, her fuchsia lips match the budding azaleas, her cardigan, and her loose ankle-length pants. “He back yet?”
Lulu is a petite woman; her frame frail and shrinking with each passing year. Lena bends, touching her lips to Lulu’s cheek,
and sniffs. Floral perfume is Lulu’s trademark, too; its fragrance comfortable and reassuring; her forgetfulness is not. Three
times over the last month, Lena has had to remind Lulu of details she should know—Randall is out of town, Kendrick is home
and not away at college, Camille is about to graduate from high school, Bobbie lives in New York.
“Randall came home yesterday. Remember?”
“That son-in-law of mine is always off somewhere—China, Paris, New York—making big-time deals.”
anyone would label Randall peaceful. If she is awake, when he lies motionless in the middle of the night like this, Lena often
pokes his shoulder, his neck, his thigh in anticipation of the slightest movement: proof he is still alive and well. Half-open
eyes tell Lena he is somewhere between dream and arousal.
Randall tugs her close, tickles her with his tongue in a new place, and she gasps from the sensation. They blend together
in their familiar way. She surrenders to his touch, the bristle of his mustache, a hint of musk oil. There is no urgency to
his movement, yet he comes swiftly, leaving Lena wanting more.
Chapter 6
L ulu and John Henry’s dream house looks the same as the day they bought it in 1965. The house is painted a pale color somewhere
between beige and rust; a lamp that switches on at 4:30 p.m. and off at 7:30 a.m. every spring, summer, winter, and fall.
Year round Christmas lights, more fragments than bulbs, loop under the eaves and around the three-sided bay window that dominates
the front of the house.
Whenever Bobbie and Lena complained of how embarrassed they were by the lights and the hideous, old-fashioned paint, John
Henry told them he didn’t have a problem with change as long as it stayed away from him. The biggest change he’d made in his
life, he told his daughters every time, was coming to California, and, since he wasn’t a risk taker, he saw no need to push
his luck.
“Lulu? You in the backyard?” Lena ducks around the low branches of the California oak where she and Bobbie always wanted John
Henry to build a tree house. The limbs of snowball hydrangeas straggle over the path; low pink azaleas, in ironic harmony
with the painted red cement, ramble below. Two garbage cans filled with dead leaves sit in the middle of the path. This Wednesday,
like every Wednesday of the eighteen months since John Henry passed, Lena feels like she has become her father. She lugs the
trash to the curb where neighbors’ cans jaggedly line the street up one side and down the other like whole notes in a measure
of music.
Once done, she heads for the backyard. The yard that used to be John Henry’s pride and joy is unkempt in a way that shocks
this daughter of parents once so fastidious: overgrown hedges, scraggly lawn, brown spots on camellia leaves, wiry rose bushes;
an apple tree branch hangs doggedly parallel to its trunk.
Lulu’s posture is effortlessly straight-backed. She holds a tarnished brass nozzle attached to a green-striped garden hose
in her left hand and listens intently to someone’s conversation on the other end of the cell phone squeezed between her right
ear and shoulder. The bluish rinse that Lulu tints her thin, curly afro with glistens in the sun. Not one hair on her head
is out of place, no wrinkles in her blouse, not a drop of water on her pants. Lena can’t help but smile at how beautiful her
mother still is, how the color of her clothes warms her skin.
Phone still in place, Lulu holds two conversations at the same time. “Tell me your
husband
didn’t see you looking like that? At least you could’ve put on lipstick.” Lulu never goes without her trademark lipstick.
Today, her fuchsia lips match the budding azaleas, her cardigan, and her loose ankle-length pants. “He back yet?”
Lulu is a petite woman; her frame frail and shrinking with each passing year. Lena bends, touching her lips to Lulu’s cheek,
and sniffs. Floral perfume is Lulu’s trademark, too; its fragrance comfortable and reassuring; her forgetfulness is not. Three
times over the last month, Lena has had to remind Lulu of details she should know—Randall is out of town, Kendrick is home
and not away at college, Camille is about to graduate from high school, Bobbie lives in New York.
“Randall came home yesterday. Remember?”
“That son-in-law of mine is always off somewhere—China, Paris, New York—making big-time deals.”
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