“My mother loves red,” Maggie said, almost as an apology. “So, this is it. Where I grew up.”
“Wow,” I said, not a big wow, but a polite one.
“Who is that in there?” a woman called from another room. “Could it be? Could it be? Is that my Maggie? My shaggy Maggie?” A woman in her midsixties came around the corner and hugged Maggie, then stepped back. “Lord, look at you, miss college girl. Still pretty. But don’t they feed you children down there?”
“Oh, Violet.”
“Don’t tell me. You lost weight.”
“Violet,” Maggie said. “This is Not Sidney.”
I put my hand out to shake, but it was left hanging there. “Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“Not Sidney goes to Morehouse.”
“Hmmm,” she said.
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“I see,” Violet said. “You have family here in Washington?”
“No, I don’t”
“Not Sidney will be staying with us,” Maggie said.
“I’ll make up the guest room, I suppose. And see if I can get another steak from the butcher.” She muttered to herself as she walked off. “Nobody tells me a damn thing around here. Guest.”
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Violet,” Maggie said.
“I got that much.”
“She’s been with us forever. She lives in the apartment downstairs.”
“Is she a relative?” I asked.
“No. She’s like family. She takes care of things. She cooks and cleans, stuff like that. She took care of my sister and me when we were little.”
“She’s the housekeeper,” I said. The word servant seemed more correct but less appropriate.
“No, she’s Violet.”
“She seems nice,” I lied. “She didn’t seem to know I was coming. Seemed kind of upset about it.”
“I guess I forgot to mention it.”
“Do your parents know I’m here?”
“Must have slipped my mind to tell them. But they won’t care. They’re going to be thrilled to meet you. They’re going to love you. Come on, let me show you the rest of the house.”
We left our bags in the foyer, and Maggie led me through the crimson-carpeted downstairs. The expanse of red was, if not disorienting, unsettling, and I found it difficult to take a step without staring down at it. In the dining room was a long, elaborately ornate table with an enormous arrangement of impossibly colored silk flowers in its center. The room was dark; the large windows were covered by Venetian blinds, which, though open, could only let in so much light past the white curtains and the red drapes, which were belted by gold cords. At the center of the coffee table that was as wide as the gold sofa was a collection of variously sized blown-glass swans filled with red-colored water.
“Like I said, my mother loves red.”
I nodded. “Well, she certainly doesn’t seem to be shy about liking it,” I said. The quality of the silence that followed made think I’d been a bit disrespectful, and so I added, “Shows strength.”
“That’s where the Christmas tree will go,” Maggie said, pointing at the corner near the fireplace.
“What does your mother do?” I asked.
“She heads a conservative think tank.”
Maggie might as well have said it in Russian for all the words meant to me. I didn’t say what? but I thought it and I’m sure it showed on my face.
“My mother testifies before Congress and goes on television all the time talking about conservative issues. She’s trying to get rid of the welfare system because it keeps black people down and to stop gay rights because it endangers the family structure and keeps black people down and to abolish affirmative action because it teaches special preference and that keeps black people down. That sort of stuff.”
I nodded.
“You’ll love her,” Maggie said without a lot of conviction.
“I’m sure I will.”
Maggie showed me up the spiral staircase to my room at the end of the hall, so I could get cleaned up and, as she put it, rest for a spell. The upstairs was considerably less red than the downstairs, but no less troubled by many knickknacks, figurines, snow globes, shot glasses, and small bells. The bells gave me a shudder as I recalled my experience with Beatrice Hancock. The guest room, my quarters, was a stable to an array of stuffed animals, small and not so small, mostly bears, but also two lions, a pug dog, a giraffe, and what I took to be a lemur.
I sat on the bed and felt suddenly like I ought not. The spread was gold in color, stiff and shiny, smooth as if it had never been touched. I stood and stepped away. I went into the bathroom and looked at the many-colored soaps on the sill of the sink. There was a shower, but no tub. Violet had put a stack of clean towels and a cloth on top of the hamper by the door. The was a knock on the door, and I stepped back into the bedroom to find Maggie entering.
“How is everything?”
“Great. It’s a very nice room.”
“You’re comfortable?”
I nodded, picked up the stuffed pug. “Your mother’s?”
“All over the house. She grew up dirt poor and never had a doll or a stuffed animal and now she says she’s making up for it.”
“What about you? Did you have a favorite stuffed animal when you were little?” I set the dog back down unto the bed.
“A bear,” she laughed. “Named Teddy. Pretty boring, huh?”
“I don’t know. Apparently a lot of people named their bears that.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Any animals?”
“Not that I can recall. For some reason I don’t think my mother would have approved.”
Maggie sat on the bed and I sat next to her. “What was she like? Your mother, what was she like?”
“Intense,” I said. “Smart, I believe. I’m pretty sure she was smart. Intense, certainly.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Eleven.”
“And that’s when you moved to Atlanta? You told me you went to live with an uncle.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I heard a rumor that you lived with Ted Turner.”
“That’s crazy.” I felt bad for lying to her and I in fact had no idea why I was. It felt especially bad to be lying when she had so plainly articulated what was true. “No, I lived with an uncle, my mother’s younger brother. He died last year.”
“Oh, I see.”
I heard voices out of the room and then footfalls on the stairs. “Is that my baby up there?” a woman said. “My baby come from college?”
“We’re in here, Mommy,” Maggie said.
“And not alone, I understand, not alone,” Maggie’s mother said as she turned into the bedroom. She was a tall woman with no shoulders, and though her clothes were not made of metal, it seemed to me she was wrapped in foil. She glittered, but maybe not in a good way. She was wrapped in gold necklaces and bangles. Surprisingly, however, she wore no red.
I stood and glanced back to see if I had rumpled the bedcover. It seemed I hadn’t, but still I smoothed it.
“Mommy, this is Not Sidney.”
My name, as it did with so many, gave her pause, and I could see the thought bubble over her head, Then what is his name?