White Oleander

Marvel heard the car too, and stopped making a bottle for Caitlin to stare out over my shoulder and glare. "That damn whore. Thinks she's the Duchess of Windsor. Makes me want to puke." We watched the neighbor pull her two small bags of groceries from Whole Foods out of the champagne-colored sports car.

 

"Mommy, juice" the baby whined, tugging on Marvel's T-shirt.

 

Marvel yanked her shirt from the baby's hands. "Don't you ever let me catch you talking to her," she said to me. "Christ, I remember when this was a good neighborhood. Now it's the blacks and the whores, chinks and beaners with chickens in the yard. I mean, what next?"

 

It bothered me that Marvel told me all this stuff, like I sympathized with her, like we were some Aryan secret society out here in the Valley. "I'll make up some juice," I said. I didn't even want to stand next to her.

 

While I mixed the juice, I watched the neighbor, stopping to pick up the magazines from her porch, slip them inside her grocery bag. She wore white slingbacks with black tips, like deer's hooves.

 

Then she disappeared inside the shuttered house. I was sad to see her go but glad she was out of sight of Marvel's talk like hot tar, that fumed and stank as it left her lips. I wondered if the woman in the linen suit thought we were all like Marvel, that I was like that too. It made me cringe to think that probably she did.

 

Marvel grabbed the juice and filled the bottle, handed it to Caitlin, who toddled off, clutching her special velvet pillow that said Guam. "Traipsing around in that car," Marvel grumbled. "Flaunting it in decent people's faces. Like we didn't know how she got it. Flat on her back is how."

 

The car gleamed like the flanks of a man, soft and muscular, supple. I wanted to lie down on the hood, I thought I could probably come just lying on it. I gazed past the carport to the door where she went in, wished I didn't have anything to do and could just stand there all evening to see if she'd come out again.

 

When the dishes were done and the kids put to bed, I slipped out the side door and stood next to her jacaranda, which dripped purple flowers over the fence onto Marvel's blacktop and perfumed the warm night. Music seeped out, a singer, at first I thought she was drunk but then knew it wasn't that at all, she had her own way with the words, played with them in her mouth like cherry chocolates.

 

I don't know how long I stood in the dark, swaying to this music, the woman with a voice like a horn. It seemed impossible that a woman so elegant could live right next door to us with our fifty-inch TV. I wanted to crawl under her windows, peep through a crack in her fat-slatted shutters, and see what she was doing in there. But I didn't have the nerve. I picked up a handful of her jacaranda blooms from the ground and pressed them to my face.

 

THE NEXT DAY, I got off the bus in the four o'clock heat, walked the last mile home. I didn't need the cane anymore, but the long blocks of walking still made my hip ache, bringing back my limp. I felt dirty and awkward as I trudged up our block, chafed in my Council of Jewish Women thrift store clothes, a white blouse that never softened in the wash, an unsuccessful homemade skirt.

 

In the shade in front of the house next door, our elegant neighbor was cutting some lily of the Nile, the same color as the jacaranda bloom. She was barefoot in a simple dress, and her feet and the palms of her hands showed pale pink against her burnt caramel skin. They looked ornamental, as if she came from a place where women dipped hands and feet in pink powder. She didn't smile. She was wholly absorbed in her shears, clipping a stem of rosemary, a stem of mint, in the dappled light and shade. A fallen jacaranda bloom clung to her dark hair, which was up in a careless French twist. I loved that one stray blossom.

 

I felt clumsy, ashamed of my limp and my ugly clothes. I hoped she wouldn't see me, that I could get to the house before she looked up. But when I'd reached our chain link and blacktop, and she still hadn't glanced in my direction, I was disappointed. I wished she would see me, so I could tell her, I'm not like them. Talk to me. Look up, I thought.

 

But she didn't, only stopped and picked a sprig of alyssum to smell the honey. I cut a shred from my heart and dangled it on a homemade hook before her.

 

"I like your yard," I called out.

 

She looked up, startled, as if she knew I was there but didn't think I'd speak to her. Her eyes were large and almond-shaped, the color of root beer. She wore a thin scar on her left cheek, and a gold watch on her narrow wrist. She pushed a strand of marcel-waved hair from her face and threw me a quick smile, which faded just as quickly. She turned back to her lilies. "You better not be seen talking to me. She's going to burn a cross on my lawn."

 

"You don't have a lawn," I said.

 

She smiled, but she didn't look at me again.

 

"My name's Astrid," I said.

 

"You go inside now," she said. "Astrid."

 

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