Stanley must have seen the change in Hazel. He smiled knowingly and cocked his head toward the boy. “Go on. Say hello.” Stanley’s thick German accent made his words seem more like commands than a friendly suggestion.
Hazel’s eyes widened, and she sucked in air. Bit her lip and twisted her long gold rosary.
“Go on,” Stanley said, gently taking the list from Hazel’s hand. “I’ll get these things for you.”
Hazel watched Stanley start to climb the ladder along his high shelves to retrieve a sack of flour. Watching him felt like watching sap trickle down a maple.
Just as slowly, she turned to the boy and took the full sight of him in. He was the color of indigo. Hazel had never seen somebody that midnight dark before. Her eyes scanned the long length of him. She fingered her rosary as she admired the graceful shape of his head and his long and lean shoulders. She caught glimpses of his face as he turned his head this way and that, eyes closed, singing along. Small flashes of thick lips and high cheekbones and peach fuzz on his chiseled chin. It was hard not to melt there on the spot. Hazel took him in like he was a tall glass of lemonade on the hottest of August days.
Hazel exhaled, steadied herself. Approached. Thought better of it. Withdrew. Took a step back, then another.
Every hair on Hazel’s body rose: Her back had hit something, someone. That was unexpected. The deli was small, and she was sure no one else had come in—but who knows? The dark boy, just the sight of him, had mesmerized her. She was caught in his gravity, thrust out of her usual, discreet watchfulness. She hadn’t heard the small bell over the front door chime, announcing a new visitor. She hadn’t seen the police officer—white as a clam, wide as a fence—push open the door and enter the deli. Hadn’t seen him remove his cap and cock his head at the sight of two Negro children in the white section of a Southern establishment.
But she did hear—and jump—when his deep voice rang out over Memphis Minnie’s, “Girl, have you lost your ever-loving mind?”
Girl. Hazel tensed. It was instinctive. She knew, without having to turn around, that the man was white—which was just a synonym for a death warrant in the South.
In a flash, the boy had spun on his heel and was on her, tugging at her sleeve, pulling her to him and away from the officer. His eyes—big, dark pools—seemed to plead with hers.
Come to me, his eyes said. Come to me right this second.
“Stanley, you let niggers dance up in here?”
At first, Hazel let herself be pulled by the boy. The tug on her sleeve grew more insistent, and she felt herself being led away from the danger. Hazel knew she should keep going, fold into the embrace of this new, dark boy, handsome as the night. Knew he was safety. This boy would be her blessing, her salvation. A minute ago, she would have given anything to have him turn around so she could see him in his full beauty.
But something in Hazel pulled back against her retreat, made her hesitate. It was the same force that swiveled Lot’s wife’s head around; the same longing, the same nagging desire within Anna Karenina as she watched that train approach, breathless and defiant. Whatever it was, Hazel succumbed to it.
She did something then that was unheard of in Memphis—unheard of anywhere in the South without death following like a shadow. Hazel looked at the white man. Full-on. She twisted her head around and threw her eyes directly at the large white man behind her. Beheld him without bent head or lowered gaze or blinking eye.
He was, indeed, large. His uniform was stretched to its limit around his midsection. His face, clean-shaven. A tuft of curly black hair protruded from his cap.
Hazel’s frank stare must have startled the man. She saw him recoil. Saw him reach to his side, unholster his baton.
“Girl, I’m going to ask you again if you’ve lost what nigger mind God gave you.” The police officer started to swing the baton in loose, threatening circles.
There it was again. Girl.
Nigger, Hazel did not so much mind. Perhaps because she used it herself, albeit affectionately, with only the closest of girlfriends, albeit without the sharp, hard r sound the officer had used. But girl had always sent Hazel into a silent rage. Ever since she had noticed at a very young age that white folk used it to address her mother. Girl, you did a wonder on this lace. Or Girl, you got my linens ready? Della, a grown and determined and brilliant woman, reduced to that colored girl in North Memphis who makes them fancy dresses.
The boy pulled her sleeve harder, and Hazel could feel his urgency. But she stood her ground. It took everything in her not to bare fangs. Hiss at the officer. Spit in his face.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Stanley put both his feet along the edges of the ladder and slide down it—all ten feet—in a swift, singular second. When he reached the floor, he casually picked up a spare broom that rested against a shelf and slowly approached them.
“Don’t mind her,” Stanley said, slightly out of breath, in his thick accent.
The boy, with a final tug, pulled Hazel close to him. Her eyes were still locked on the officer, but Hazel felt the fight leaving her as unexpectedly as it had come. The boy’s scent was overpowering. He smelled like leather and orange peel.
“I’ve got you,” the boy whispered into Hazel’s ear. “I’ve got you.”
Perhaps nothing else would have made Hazel drop her gaze, but she melted at the brown butter of his voice, leaned into him, looked into his eyes instead. His eyes were an entreaty. They simply said: We need to leave.
“Stanley, why on earth you got niggers dancing in here? Even got nigger music on. And here I thought the flood was the end of the world.”
“They’re just kids,” Stanley said.
He took a few steps toward the officer, broom in hand. Added, “Her daddy died in the flood.”
“Let’s go,” the boy whispered. His eyes were pleading.
Hazel relented. She nodded her assent.
The boy took her hand, led her toward the door. He made delicate steps, maneuvering around the shop’s table and chairs. Putting as much distance between them and the white man as possible.
“The fuck a dead, drowned nigger got to do with the price of tea in China?” the officer said, voice rising. “And where the fuck y’all going?”
The boy did not pause in his long, steady strides to the door. He did not pause when they heard the unforgettable sound of a wooden broom handle hitting bone. They reached the door just as the officer said, bewilderment and contempt in his voice, “And what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The bell over the door chimed as the boy opened the door wide and pushed Hazel through it. “Go!” he shouted.
She ran. Hazel obeyed for the sole reason that she heard the boy’s steps right behind her.
Her father’s boots made her stumble when she took a hard right on Chelsea. But she continued on, dodging puddles the size of small ponds. She heard the boy’s deep breaths behind her, heard his splashes in the muddy water. Hazel kept running.
They ended up at the dead end of Locust Street. It was dark green with heavy southern foliage—bush and bramble, willows and magnolias hundreds of years old grew in a thicket of unkempt brush. Pecan trees lined both sides of the street.
Hazel put her hands on her knees and panted. “I love this house,” she said when her voice came to her.