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.