Our confirmation class between the front pillars of the church. After Mass, the men talked in groups, without their wives and kids. Clean-jawed, still-athletic World War II vets like my dad. Grim and silent, they returned to walk us to the cars. Every Sunday became a litany of defeats — more families driven out by the blacks as they block-busted South MacGregor, someone’s watch dog murdered, the Sakowitz mansion sold for pennies. You see, even the Jewish families moved out, fled to Braeswood. Mom would try to talk about something cheerful as we drove home. Beneath her summertime straw hats, I’d see her forced smiles in Charles of the Ritz’s reddest lipstick. Only grunts from Dad’s side of the car, if that much. We started going out for breakfast after church, instead of cooking at home like we’d always done. The smell of pancakes and bacon frying in cast iron no longer felt safe. Anything could happen, at any moment.
I wish I had just one photograph of our old neighborhood before all this started: The enormous white antebellums along Braes Bayou, with acres of undulating beauty beneath long-armed oaks. The large yards, restful. Every spring, I waited to glimpse the azaleas — a six-foot-tall solid wall of vibrant pink next to the long white porches. We lived several blocks south of there, in the middle-class section where all the streets were named after the South’s beauty: Charleston, Tampa, Shenandoah, Allegheny, Ozark.
Near the end, I couldn’t walk half a block down our street to my friend Miriam’s. Mom still hadn’t learned to drive and refused to go to the neighborhood grocery without Dad. Her lips were pursed and eyes serious all the time, especially when she thought I wasn’t watching. When Dad got home from work, he wouldn’t drink his highball. I have to be ready, he’d say. I don’t know when they’ll come. The voices who called us at night had promised rocks, firebombs, bullets. The voices of people we’d never met. Did we pass them at the grocery store on Saturdays? Did we sit with them on the downtown bus? Were these the husbands and sons of the black ladies who called me honey chile and smiled in radiant friendship while patting my cheeks?
I don’t have an outside photo of the place he lived. A run-down three-story hotel downtown on Caroline. Painted-over yellow-brown brick. Squares of glass windows on the first floor as if it had a diner inside. Red neon on the outside advertising Pecan Waffles in block letters — food that didn’t exist. That wasn’t why I stopped. His room was on the second floor.
His strong, sinewy arms were perfectly tanned. Nails split from the yardwork, the lawn mowers and the tools. But always clean khakis with a crease when I was there. A thin belt around a trim waist. An ease of movement that, even back then, I would’ve described as graceful. Calm. Purposeful. Never rushed. A strong tongue. The barbed wedge called loss cutting into my sternum from underneath, where no one could touch its excruciating facets — not even him. Besides, we didn’t talk much. That’s part of why I remember so clearly when he told me to get a copy of Mom’s car keys — both of them, ignition and trunk. We could drive to his folks’ farm — farther south, near Victoria. He’d introduce me to his mom. I’d just have to make up a reason to get away for a Saturday. I did sports — it’d be easy. Piece of cake.
Those damn high school photographs. Crooked grins and a patchwork of colorful optimism and plans for bright futures, full of achievement. The hidden truths of hatred and fear I’d learned during that last year in our old home. All of it swallowed but stuck partway down your gullet. Terror that what you retched up would be your heart. The one thing you wanted: to be truly dead so you’d forget all those childhood things you loved that had been taken away by people you didn’t even know well enough to hate. Your heart, the only thing you’d convinced yourself you could kill with no one noticing.
See how straight my mother is standing? That strained smile. In every photo. That ugly wood paneling we thought was so modern. I showed him that photo once — our little family in the new den. Behind us, the gilt-edged rows of the World Book Encyclopedia stand at attention. He kissed me up the side of my face while extracting the photograph from my fingers. I’m your whole family now. Then he pushed me back on his bed and raised my skirt, lowering his lips to where they always went the second I was inside his room. I’m your everything, remember?
Yes, yes. I always said yes.
Oh, that was our dog at the new house — a hunting Lab for dad. He was a sweet dog — born during a norther in February at the first house. Four of the litter froze to death before we could get a heater into the garage for them. I got home first and could’ve saved them, but I was scared of the mewling puppies and couldn’t face the blood leaking everywhere in heavy clumps. So I didn’t go closer — just shut the wooden door and walked back to the house. I sat in the empty house listening to the sleet hit the windows. Too old for dolls, uninterested in reading books, I just sat in the kitchen watching the grayness outside. I didn’t call anyone for help.
One of the pups who survived became Dad’s. They spent a lot of time together on weekends — gone to the hunting lease. In the evenings, after work, Dad would toss a burlap dummy for the dog to retrieve in the narrow backyard of the new house. The dog always eager, no matter how many throws or how much slobber trailed down his glossy black fur. Dad was silent in the evenings, always silent by then.
This photo is back at our first house — the one we had to leave. Those flowerbeds were wrested from Houston’s famous black gumbo. Bright-headed hydrangeas, lavender and light blue, coaxed into bloom. Mom and I on our knees weeding every Saturday afternoon. There’s no photograph of Mom pulling weeds and crabgrass in her sweat-soaked pin curls. We only took pictures on Sundays, after church. That one day full of photogenic smiles and homemade pancakes, hot syrup and leisure. Even that one day ultimately wrecked, like all the others, by the cruising cars of men with two-by-fours and baseball bats.
The last Easter in our little house, in the front yard by the big picture window. Remember Jackie Kennedy and her color-coordinated pillboxes? Mom let me pick out a white one with a short veil. I still have it. The dress was also white. A square neckline showing my tanned collarbone. At thirteen, I had a collarbone like the First Lady’s — elegant, bones showing nicely. That’s what Mom said. She also said I was beautiful, but I knew it was the lie of a fond mother. Hopeful too. Above all else, hopeful. Boys your age are intimidated by your looks — that’s all. I was surprised when she said this. No one ever asked me out on a date, so she couldn’t be right.