James stands at a distance, the other officer’s hand pressed to the middle of his chest. All three wait for Grace’s answer. She can feel the small hand of the girl, Cassia was her name, lifting Grace’s face, telling her the cut didn’t look so bad. The girl had seen worse, far worse. Nothing that won’t heal.
“Gracie?”
Grace shakes her head. “Well, of course those things aren’t true,” she says. “At least, not as far as I know. And I think I would know if someone were attacked in my own garage. I simply thought I could help.”
James holds up both hands and backs away from the officers.
“What will happen now?” Grace says. “Because there was no one harmed here, what will happen to the man?”
The curly-haired officer with the smooth skin pulls on his hat, meets Grace’s eyes as if preparing to answer, but turns away instead.
One more time, James makes a sweeping gesture intended to invite the officers to leave. They walk across the porch and down the sidewalk, and when they have neared the driveway, James slams the door.
“Smells like supper’s ready,” he says, walking past Grace toward the kitchen.
The legs of a chair scoot across the tile. Silverware clatters on the laminate tabletop.
“Strange, huh?” he calls back to Grace. His voice is flat when he speaks. He’s angry but won’t want Grace to see it in his face. “Why would some fellow say that about our place? About you?”
Grace walks over to the window and pushes aside the drapes. The officers have reached the end of the driveway. One of them, the curly-haired one, walks around the black-and-white patrol car, and from the driver’s side, he tips his hat at Grace.
“They probably got the wrong address, don’t you think?” she says. The officers’ car rolls away from the front of the house. Across the street, a few neighbors shield their eyes as they watch. “It was silly, what I did. I’m sorry.”
She’s now certain it’s the third man they’ve arrested. All she remembers are his eyes. They were a deep brown and his lids drooped, making him look sorry for what was about to happen. He’s the only one who would tell. Those men, all three of them, probably live at the Filmore. She has seen other colored men passing down the street at the usual times, but she hasn’t seen any one of the three, not since the night they came for her. The man, the one with sorrowful eyes, must have confessed to the police. He must have described Grace, told them the woman was pregnant and had long blond hair and lived at 721 Alder. That’s why the officer with the dark curls and smooth young face had looked at Grace like he knew everything. He knew about the sore spot on the back of her head and why her lip was split. Grace is the only pregnant wife on the block. Maybe the only one on the street. The officers want Grace to tell the truth because Elizabeth can’t. They are thinking it’s a shame when people won’t speak up. They are thinking Grace is their only hope. They are thinking there’s hope to be had.
James’s body is warm when he steps up behind Grace. He wraps his arms around her, and she leans into him.
“Don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you,” he says.
Resting her head on James’s chest, Grace closes her eyes, holds his hands, and wonders if he loves her enough to stay should he find out the truth. Mother thinks not. “Nothing bad will ever happen to us.”
“Promise me,” James says, burying his face in her hair.
“I promise.”
Before climbing into bed, Malina scrubs her face, dabs night cream on the delicate skin beneath her eyes, and tucks her hair into a sleep net. From the drawer in her nightstand, she pulls out her white pills and sets the bottle where Mr. Herze is sure to see it. He knows how heavily Malina sleeps when she’s taken one. Dr. Cannon had said they’d calm her, minimize the stresses of her day. Mr. Herze doesn’t approve of them, never has, and most days she is able to refrain by doing her counting and breathing.
The first weeks after she stopped taking the medication were the most difficult. The pills tugged at her all day from the kitchen cabinet where she normally kept them. Mr. Herze had insisted she stop. He said they made her eyes foggy and her habits lazy. Time and his insistence lessened the pills’ charm. Even as she swallows two of them while waiting for Mr. Herze, she doesn’t swallow them because she craves the relief they will bring to the tense muscle running from her neck to her shoulders or the order they will bring to the worries tumbling around her head. She swallows them because Mr. Herze, as angry as he might be at the sight of that small brown bottle, will know better than to try to wake her.
Even if Betty Lawson was telling the truth and Mr. Herze knows for certain Malina lied to him, he won’t be able to question her about it tonight. He won’t be able to rage about his hatred of Malina’s silly lies, a rage that always leads him to strike her. A rage that has led to blackened eyes, bruised cheeks, sore ribs, and a broken collarbone-or, more precisely, a fractured clavicle. She will sleep soundly and peacefully tonight, and tomorrow or the next day she’ll conjure a story to explain why she lied about driving the night that colored woman was killed. It was a trip to the shut-ins. She’s so sorry she lied. She thought he’d be cross at her for putting herself in danger by driving so late at night. Or she was delivering fresh linens to the church that were needed early the next morning. Or she was afraid Mr. Herze had had car trouble, a flat tire, perhaps. She didn’t see anything that happened on Willingham. She didn’t see anything at all.
Thirty minutes after washing down the pills with a glass of lukewarm water, Malina slides beneath the cool sheets, switches off the lamp at her bedside, and stares at the white sheers fluttering in her window. The light, flimsy fabric dances in the breeze, and as it flutters and flaps, a thin fog settles in behind her eyes. Downstairs, the back door opens and closes. Mr. Herze’s footsteps cross the kitchen. The floorboards in the hallway creak as he passes through to the foyer, and then silence. He is standing at the bottom of the stairs, probably looking up toward the closed bedroom door, probably wondering what he is to do with Malina. One footstep and then a second and then a third as he climbs the stairs.
It’s been another day and night spent searching for Elizabeth. Mr. Herze will be tired and sore. Normally Malina would rub his shoulders and fix him a sandwich. The bedroom door opens and light from the hallway spills into the room and across Malina’s face. Her eyelids are closed. Don’t let them flinch in the light. Those are the sounds of Mr. Herze pulling off his shirt and unbuckling his belt. Water runs in the bathroom sink and flows through the pipes that travel down the walls. He sits on the edge of the mattress, his weight causing Malina to roll from one side to the other because isn’t that what one would do in her sleep? He smells crisp and clean, like Malina’s French-milled soap. She buys the pink bars special-order through the Sears catalog. Her jaw loosens and her shoulders soften as the pills melt and soak in. A few feet away, air rushes in through Mr. Herze’s nose and out through his mouth.
“Malina?”
It’s a deep whisper. Malina can’t stop the shiver that travels up her spine and into her neck. The word seems to echo in the dark room.
“Malina?” Again, no louder.
When Malina wakes in the morning, she hopes he’ll be gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s long past dark and Grace should be sleeping. Instead, she is listening. The colored men have already come and gone. Every night around ten they pass, although now, because Orin Schofield sits in the back alley, the men walk down the middle of Alder Avenue. She’s glad Orin’s there. She even finds herself hoping, wishing he would find those men out on the street. Something is different since she told the police no woman was attacked in her garage. Saying it never happened is different from not telling. It’s worse. It means those men-that man-can come back.