New California Fiction : COLOR STRUCK

Every year of Caldonia’s 36 years, they’d all gathered at Mother’s for Thanksgiving. That was before Dad died and the house on East 23rd was sold to a Chinese man, Lee Wong. Think of it! Ten of those Wongs crammed into the old stucco house that used to feel crowded with just five: Mother, Daddy, Caldonia, Vesta and Clayton. It made Caldonia shake her head in disbelief. Caldonia’s latest obstetrician was Chinese, or was it Japanese? She never could keep it straight. A Chinese girl at work recently corrected Caldonia and said, “I’m Filipina.” Then she reached out and laid her narrow hand on Caldonia’s rounded stomach, so unexpectedly that Caldonia felt as if she’d been intruded on. The girl, seeing Caldonia’s surprise, smiled and said, “For luck. For me. I want a baby, too.” Caldonia felt the warmth of the girl’s hand long after it had been withdrawn.

For the last month of Caldonia’s pregnancy, her Chinese or Japanese or whatever-she-was obstetrician had been seeing Caldonia once a week. The doctor was a small, friendly woman with bright eyes who dressed in elegant suits, as if she were running off to business meetings instead of squatting on a chair to peer up between her patients’ legs. She spoke proper English without any accent. “Everything looks good,” she told Caldonia. “Everything looks just as it should.”

This was Caldonia’s third child, her conception so unexpected that at first Caldonia had not told Fred. She waited over a week. Not that she would have ever considered not having the child, but Caldonia needed time alone to absorb the fact that, even with Iris and Nadia both in school, she was going to be the mother of a baby again, faced with diapers and sleepless nights.

Now, as she busied herself in the kitchen, Caldonia longed for the past Thanksgivings at the East 23rd Street house, when Mother had festooned the doorways with crepe paper, and Daddy, in his matching slacks and sweater, carried out the holiday routine of washing and polishing every inch of his two black Cadillacs. Standing in that immaculate driveway, chamois in hand, he always greeted and chided them as they arrived, his children, then his grandchildren, encouraging everyone to pause and admire the shine of fenders and hoods, and listen to him brag for the hundredth time, “Look at that, a hundred thousand miles and not a scratch, not a bump. . . .”

Thanksgivings with Mother and Daddy had always been so perfect. There was plenty of room and more than enough food for anyone who happened along; neighbors, friends, extra relatives, dropping in for some of Mother’s famous sweet potato pie: “Oh, and while you’re at it, honey, try a little taste of turkey and a bit of oyster dressing, and just go ahead and get you some of my bread pudding, too.”

But the last year had brought about many changes. Daddy was dead and Mother had squeezed herself and her possessions into the cement-block Harriet Tubman senior high-rises in West Oakland. Her cramped fourth-floor apartment, with its tiny kitchenette overlooking the freeway, no longer accommodated the swell of family. She now boiled tea water on a two-burner stove and heated up frozen dinners in a microwave.

And Mother herself, gone stoop-shouldered and brackish and irritable, complained that the grandchildren made her nervous when they came to visit: She reproached them for being too loud in the elevators, always threatening to pull on the emergency buzzer, and she worried they’d tear up her furniture, so she’d covered everything in plastic and laid runners along the beige pile carpet. She spoke more sharply to Caldonia, Vesta and Clayton, her three grown children, as if they were still children themselves, wearing on her last good nerve.

What Mother announced to Caldonia about Thanksgiving this year was, “I’ve retired from cooking, and now it’s somebody else’s turn.” What she meant was, “It’s up to you, Caldonia; Clayton and Vesta are useless.”

So Caldonia and Fred won by default, even though Caldonia was just a month past giving birth and still feeling sore and irritable. This child had come Cesarean, a fact that dulled Caldonia’s sense of accomplishment. It seemed the baby had not really come out of her body. Now here she was, barely recuperated, roasting the turkey and browning homemade bread crumbs, all because she knew better than to count on Vesta and Clayton.

“Y’all gonna have to pitch in; I’m not the Lone Ranger, you know,” she told Vesta and Clayton by phone, with special emphasis in her voice just to make a point. She wondered if God was growing weary with her impatience.

After all, He’d seen to it that Caldonia and Fred were blessed with so much. That’s how friends and family saw it, too. She and Fred seemed to make good choices, beginning with each other. Yes, fortune had often smiled on them. Fred was always getting promotions and raises on the police force. Caldonia had just made supervisor at the phone company. They paid their bills on time, they attended church, and they’d saved enough money to put Nadia and Iris in a private Christian school.

Their good fortune wasn’t lost on Vesta. “Y’all got all my luck,” she was fond of saying. But luck always has a limit.

It started with the Cesarean birth of this third child. Caldonia suspected Fred was a little disappointed this hadn’t been a boy, though he’d never say such a thing.

In her hospital bed, breathing hard and pushing, Caldonia recalled the Filipina woman’s hand touching her. At the time, Caldonia had felt too startled to be annoyed, and then she realized the woman meant no harm. But it felt like a curse. And her labor was long and hard.

When the pains got the worst, the doctor ordered the baby cut out. It was a disappointment, but after a short sleep and the drowsy aftermath, Caldonia found herself coming to in the bright light of her own excitement. She made out the shape and length of a perfect form, eyes, ears, fingers and toes all there and accounted for. She cried out in happiness, a miracle even the third time, grasping the wet thing in her arms. But later, as her mind cleared and they cleaned up the baby and returned her, Caldonia got a good look. She began to suspect a blunder. During her sleep, something must have happened. The child, made up of parts of her and Fred, did not seem to belong to either of them, and Caldonia wasn’t sure where to lay the blame, if such a thing could be blamed at all: on God (whom she fiercely loved) or Nature (which she tried to respect) or the very chromosomes in the cells of her own body, which had bleached the child the color of milk, tinted her eyes pink, stained the thin spread of hair an off-shade of lemon.

If Fred hadn’t actually seen the child emerge from her body, she would have been certain there was a hospital mix-up, and some white couple was going home with her child. Later, she recalled an article she saw years ago in the National Enquirer: “White Couple Gives Birth to Black Baby.” The article went on to say that the woman, unbeknownst to her, carried black genes. The husband didn’t believe the woman, accused her of infidelity and divorced her immediately. Caldonia thought about an article in the reverse: “Black Woman Gives Birth to White Baby.” It wouldn’t work because a black woman’s baby, no matter how light, would always be black.

Fred had to remind Caldonia that this was a gift from God, and that whatever God had in His plan they must accept with humility. Caldonia cried bitterly anyway. “It’s our child,” he kept telling her. “What is wrong with you?” But Caldonia prayed secretly and fervently that the child would darken.

From upstairs, there came a soft cry. Caldonia set down the wooden spoon she’d been stirring the cranberry sauce with and turned down the flame under the pot. She was quicker to attend to the needs of this child than she’d been with Iris and Nadia. By the time she’d gotten upstairs and was peering into the crib, the baby was sleeping soundly again in her nest of quilts. Caldonia had taken to dressing her in blue; pink was so unflattering, causing her features to all but disappear in that little white face. Often, while the baby slept, Caldonia sat close by and watched. She wanted to understand exactly who this child was. She couldn’t help comparing the luscious dark silk of her two older daughters’ baby skin, how warm they were to the touch. This child seemed cold and foreign, a baby from some northern clime--Scandinavia, perhaps, a place inhabited by people with white skin and canary-yellow hair, with eyes like frost. And yet, Nature had played a trick, for the baby’s small lips were full, her cheekbones high and her nose broad like Fred’s. And her hair was a thick cap of tight nappy curls. Daily, Caldonia checked the little crescents just under the child’s tiny cuticles, but she found no indication that the skin there intended to darken.

Caldonia lingered by the sleeping baby, reassured by her soft breathing. From a certain angle, with the blinds drawn, the child might almost be considered pretty. There was a loud knock, followed by several more, at the front door. Caldonia pulled herself away and hurried down the stairs, fastening her apron strings as she went.

It was Baby Sister Vesta, the first to arrive. It was only noon, but since Vesta’s 10th or so separation from Harold Sr., she was always showing up places early.

“You’re going to take all the skin off your knuckles pounding on my door like that,” Caldonia scolded. Vesta was holding a large green salad in a wooden bowl, covered with Saran Wrap. Behind her, Rosie and Li’l Harold were still piling out of Vesta’s dented and rusted red Toyota, with the bad starter and moody brakes and the cockeyed windshield wipers. As usual, they were already fussing with each other.

Caldonia stepped back and let Vesta past, bearing the salad bowl, which reminded Caldonia of a miniature terrarium.

“Now why’d you go on and dress the salad like that?” Caldonia was annoyed. “Dinner’s not until 2.”

Vesta was unfazed. She was already peeping into the living room to inspect the new sectional furniture Caldonia and Fred had ordered from a catalogue.

“Ooooooh, this musta costed y’all a fortune!” she exclaimed. “Mmmmm, and light-colored, too. I’d never dare have anything light-colored with Rosie and Li’l Harold around.”

Vesta had never been considered pretty (certainly not the way Caldonia was--high school homecoming queen and so on) what with her lumpy potato shape, funny lopsided smile and eyes set too close together, like a moth’s. She was the lightest of Mother’s children, honey butterscotch, but her complexion was uneven in places, scarred dark by childhood acne. And Vesta had never learned to dress. Today she was wearing yellow and black striped tights, two sizes too small, and an oversized yellow turtleneck with black pockets. Caldonia thought her sister looked like a misshapen bumblebee. And those red shoes, like Minnie Mouse! Caldonia had never seen anything so ugly and cheap looking.

Rosie and Li’l Harold burst through the door and flung themselves on her. These wild children were the opposite of Iris and Nadia: careful, precise girls who rarely made messes and whom Vesta referred to disparagingly one infamous Christmas as “those little prisses.” It took two whole weeks for Caldonia to get over that slight.

“Where’s the baby?” cried Rosie, and Harold echoed, “Where’s the baby?” They’d come clutching armloads of complicated toys with multiple loose parts that would soon be scattered. They continued to press themselves against Caldonia with wet kisses and sticky hands.

“Yes, where is the baby?” Vesta wanted to know, bending over to see if the plastic flowers in the vase were real.

“She’s ‘sleep, upstairs,” said Caldonia gently.

“Y’all named her yet? Mother’s fit to be tied about that poor child.”

Caldonia made her voice firm. “ No , we haven’t decided on a name yet.”

Vesta clucked her tongue like an old woman. “Scandalous,” she said cheerfully. “You can’t have a no-name child.”

Before Caldonia could snap back, Vesta went on, eyeing Caldonia’s new beige curtains at the window. “I can’t wait to have me my own place. I’ll tell you, girl, Clayton is driving me nuts. He’s so damn picky. Picky this, picky that. He blew up at the kids the other morning, I mean really lost it, because he said they’d eaten all his cold cereal. Can you believe that? Yelling at my kids. Over cold cereal!”

“Brother’s doing you a favor,” Caldonia reminded her. “What you need to do is get things straight with Harold.”

Vesta blew air from her mouth. “That man works my final nerve!” She turned so quickly on her red shoes that her heel left a scuff mark across Caldonia’s polished hardwood floor.

“Harold is your husband,” said Caldonia.

Rosie and Li’l Harold started on a mess in the hallway.

Caldonia jumped in. “You kids set your toys over there, and then you can go swing out back. Take turns. No fussing. I don’t want to have to come out there.”

When she turned around, Vesta was poking her face into the oven for a peek at the turkey. “This thing’s big as a elephant!” she exclaimed, swallowed up in steam.

“Girl, get outta my oven. You’re gonna make it cook uneven.”

“I could baste it.”

“It’s self-basting,” sighed Caldonia. “Close the door.”

“Where is everybody?” Vesta asked.

“Fred’s in the family room watching the game, but don’t bother him, and the girls are down the street.”

Vesta was wearing that awful wig again, the straight-hair page boy, three shades too light for her complexion. It reminded Caldonia of one of the old Supremes. So what if Vesta’s real hair was thinning, it was all that worry over Harold. If she’d just ditch him once and for all, her hair would thicken, her skin would clear, and her whole life would improve. She’d lose some weight, could afford decent clothes, and she’d get another man, if that’s what she wanted.

Caldonia didn’t believe in divorce, but in this case she thought it was high time Vesta and Harold Sr. split up for good. How those two had managed to last all these years was a mystery. Everybody’d warned her from the start, that very first day Vesta dragged Harold home from high school. They’d succeeded in putting a stop to their eternal fussing long enough to concoct their two unruly children, but otherwise it was always hurricane weather at Vesta’s.

Daddy’d had a fit. He had forbidden Vesta to marry Harold, told her the boy was all flash and foolishness, barely one step up from a hoodlum. But she was so hardheaded and downright silly, she just thumbed her nose at Daddy and forged ahead with a huge wedding, marrying Harold in an expensive ceremony at the Methodist church Mother attended. Daddy ended up bankrolling the whole naughty business, including the expensive lace dress with train, though everyone knew Vesta had about as much business wearing white as the devil himself.

So it was that Vesta had spent these last 14 years paying the piper. Over and over, she’d packed up the children and left Big Harold lock, stock and barrel. This time it was Clayton who relented and let her move in with him in his two-bedroom apartment down on Lake Merritt. It was supposed to be temporary, just until Vesta made other arrangements, but now six months had passed, and Clayton had confided to Caldonia that his patience was wearing thin.

Foolish Clayton. It wasn’t as if Caldonia hadn’t cautioned him. He was always getting suckered into things like this, and now he was whining all the time to Caldonia. Said he was tired of coming home from the community college where he taught business classes to find the living room floor littered with Rosie’s Black Barbie-and-her-accessories and the horse doll with the eyelashes and purple hair and all her accessories, and pieces of Li’l Harold’s Lego set strewn around, and an oblivious Vesta curled up on the sofa with Clayton’s plaid bathrobe over her legs watching “Jeopardy!” and eating Cheez-Its.

At first, Caldonia tried to listen patiently, the way the Lord would want her to. But she finally had to tell Clayton straight out that he needed to “put the girl out.”

She spoke from experience. Just a year ago, she and Fred had hosted Vesta and the kids, and now here they were having to spend good money replacing the sectional furniture that Rosie and Li’l Harold had crayoned on.

Vesta leaned across the countertop to steal an olive from the cut-glass dish. “You know, Clayton’s bringing a woman over today,” she announced coyly.

Caldonia launched into making biscuits. “Over here? He didn’t mention it to me.”

“That’s because he’s afraid you won’t approve.” She let that sink in. “Let’s see, Jean or Jane, shoot! I never can remember her name.” Vesta headed over to the fridge for a diet soda. She found a can, popped the tab and brushed a loose strand of wig hair from her face. “You ain’t heard about her yet?”

Caldonia shook her head. “I can’t keep up with Clayton’s women. It’s enough to keep up with three children.”

“This one’s different ,” said Vesta knowingly. “And he’s crazy about her, too.” She paused, watching for Caldonia’s reaction. “Now I don’t want to say something I shouldn’t. . . . Mother said don’t upset you. . . .”

“Then don’t,” said Caldonia, rinsing off her fingers at the sink. From the basement family room came a whoop and a shout from Fred.

“Well,” Vesta went on, “I haven’t seen him like this with anybody for a while. She spends the night four, five times a week.”

“What? With you and the kids there?”

Vesta nodded and swiped another olive.

“She’s pretty and polite. Mother thinks so, too.”

“Pretty and polite!” murmured Caldonia. “You and Mother.”

Vesta seemed especially pleased with herself. “There’s something you won’t like about her, but I’ll let you find out on your own.” And she let out a ladylike belch and squished the diet soda can in her right fist.

To herself, Caldonia murmured, “Lord, Lord, Lord,” and then, mercifully, the baby cried, and Caldonia excused herself and went upstairs.

CLAYTON ARRIVED SHORTLY after 1:30, sporting a new haircut and supporting Mother’s stout, crooked body against his skeletal frame. He reminded Caldonia of a marionette, arms and legs dangling off the sides of his body as if held on by wires. Nervous energy seemed to eat up any pounds that might have settled onto his frail frame.

Once, Caldonia had asked Mother about Clayton’s puniness and his high voice, worried that Clayton was being denied entry to manhood, but Mother cut her short and asked her what on earth had gotten into her, what could she possibly mean bringing up something like that, was she trying to say her baby brother was gay ? Mother’s eyes had hardened like marbles. No, that wasn’t what Caldonia had meant at all, she’d only said he was “frail,” but by then it was too late because Mother’d already interpreted, in the narrowest terms available, what Caldonia meant about Mother’s favorite child. “He’s a good son. He finished college. He’s done well for himself and he does well by me. Don’t you talk about your brother that way.”

Clayton kissed Caldonia on the cheek, and now he was kissing Vesta, too. “Let’s see, it’s been an hour since I’ve seen you ,” he teased.

“Ha ha ha,” murmured Vesta, unaware that her wig had slid an inch off her forehead and a portion of her mashed-down real hair was exposed. “You’re still pissed off at the kids about that cold cereal, I know you.”

Mother shot them both a look and said she needed to sit down right away, she wasn’t feeling right. They found her a comfortable spot on the new sectional sofa in front of the living room television, where she announced, “Now, I don’t want to look at no football.” Clayton crouched on the floor and began to search the channels. A quick perusal through the main networks produced mostly oversized men tumbling around in helmets.

“How about a parade?” Clayton suggested.

“Don’t want to see a parade either. Just find something pleasant for me to look at and turn down the sound.”

Clayton settled on a PBS travelogue of pubs in Ireland and got Mother adjusted. Caldonia brought out glasses of fruit juice for them both.

“Oh, goodness, you know I can’t take ice,” said Mother.

Caldonia took the glass back to the sink and spooned out ice. There was just the slightest edge to her voice as she said, “Vesta, take this back out to Mother, please, and tell her it’s good for her. Just a little cranberry juice and orange juice and some mineral water.”

Clayton hovered in the kitchen doorway, glass in hand. His eyes seemed to burst from his eager light-brown face.

“Jill call yet?” he asked in a voice meant to sound matter-of-fact but which came out over-eager and tinged with plaintiveness. He had a nervous habit of rocking on his heels then rising onto his toes, as if in preparation for ascension.

“No, nobody’s called,” said Caldonia primly, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.

Vesta let out a shriek. “Ooooh, honey, and I called her Jane. Shoot, you know me, I’m just bad with names. Guess I been so nervous I’d call her Evelyn, I just don’t call her by a name at all.”

Clayton’s complexion went gray for a moment. He leaned back hard on his heels, suddenly grounded.

“Vesta, you are something else, bringing up Evelyn like that!” snapped Caldonia.

Evelyn had been Clayton’s fiancee the year before. A beauty queen, Miss Black Something or Other, standing over six feet tall, with legs like a giraffe’s and eyes that had seen just a little too much of life for Caldonia’s taste. Evelyn Gilroy: the color of dark butterscotch with skin as smooth as silk and a set of thick eyelashes that swept across her cheeks, blinking like a doll each time anyone asked her something. “I believe so,” she’d say if something was true. “I believe not,” she’d say if something was false. And she’d cold-shouldered Clayton’s family, let them know they weren’t really good enough.

But Clayton hadn’t seen it coming, he never did. Evelyn kept him tied up in a knot so tight he wouldn’t eat, and he lost weight and took to having migraines. But like a fool he went ahead and spent all his money on the diamond ring he placed on her finger. He saw engagement, a lifetime of long, brown Evelyn, his forever; Evelyn saw only an expensive diamond. She had the gold melted down after the breakup and put the diamond in a pendant.

Caldonia had kept her mouth shut. “Six things the Lord hates . . . a false witness telling a pack of lies and one who stirs up quarrels between brothers.” She tried not to say anything bad about anybody.

Clayton looked at his watch. “I’d better try calling Jill again.”

“Turkey’s about ready,” said Caldonia. “And what did you bring for dinner, Mr. Clayton?”

Clayton’s eyes shot over to Vesta. “Didn’t Vesta bring my salad?”

Caldonia turned, hand on hip, eyebrows arched. “Well then, what did Miss Vesta bring?”

“Oh, shoot,” Vesta moaned, without shame. “I thought the salad was from all of us. I mean, we live in one place, me and Clayton and the kids. . . .”

“But there are four people living there,” Caldonia pointed out, “and that means four big appetites.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve got so much on my mind,” sighed Vesta. “Harold called this morning wanting to know what me and the kids were doing today. He’s wanting to come back. . . .”

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Caldonia.

Fred was cheering again from the family room. Caldonia cast her eyes ceilingward. “Now watch, the baby’ll start crying any second.”

“I’ll get her!” said Clayton. “You named her yet?”

As predicted, the thin, high siren of Caldonia’s newest addition scored the air. “Oh, shoot,” said Caldonia. “I knew this would happen. Vesta, would you set the table, please.”

From the living room, Mother’s voice rasped out, “The baby’s crying. Aren’t we going to eat sometime today?”

Then the children surged through the back door, all four of them, Iris announcing that she and Nadia were back and that Rosie had yanked the barrettes from her braids, Li’l Harold was spitting on ants, and what was Caldonia going to do about it?

Upstairs, Caldonia found relief from all of their demands, lifting the pink and yellow fussing child from the little crib. Her watery blue eyes were squeezed into slits. Sensitivity to light, might lead to blindness. Keep her out of direct sunlight, protect her eyes and skin. She sounded like a houseplant, to be tended in the dark. Caldonia held her until the cries turned to soft whimpers.

“There, there, sweetheart,” she murmured. She carried the child down the back steps, avoiding the rest of the family, to where Fred sat on the edge of the family-room sofa. She handed the child to him. “There’s my little girl,” he said joyfully. His long-limbed dark body dwarfed the pale doll beside him. “There’s my little sweetheart.”

“Everyone’s here,” said Caldonia.

“Shooooo, my little baby,” he cooed into the child’s ear and lay her against his thick, dark chest. “My little Angela, my little Monica, my Little Bo-peep.”

Caldonia started out the door, then turned and paused a moment. She was trying to make sense out of Fred’s long, milk-chocolate arms and the tiny, wriggling shrimp-like creature now being caressed, ever so gently, by his capable black hands.

I wonder, thought Caldonia, if I’ll ever love her enough. It was an ugly, secret thought, one that haunted Caldonia with all its awful possibilities.

THREE O’CLOCK, AND Mother snored on the sofa. The turkey sat browned but untouched in its pan on top of the stove. The salad continued to wilt in the refrigerator.

The table, arrayed with Caldonia’s wedding china, held an air of empty expectation. The kids were snacking on peanut butter and arguing over Chutes and Ladders on the dining room floor.

“I really think we should go ahead with dinner,” Fred finally said, “meaning no offense to your lady friend, Clayton, but I don’t want to hold things up any longer.”

Caldonia saw her brother’s face fall. “Maybe just a half hour more,” she said sympathetically. “You’re sure she’s got our number and the directions?”

Clayton nodded. He sat hunched on a hassock in the living room, clasping and unclasping his hands, looking himself like a scolded child. The phone rang. Both Vesta and Clayton practically leaped from their seats.

But it was only a friend of Fred’s from the police force. The baby’s tiny bright pink face nestled itself against Caldonia’s bosom.

She squeezed the nameless child to her. The funny little face called to mind a newborn kitten’s. Caldonia knew the family was talking behind her back. Even Fred was running out of patience. She kept waiting for the name to announce itself, the way Iris’ and Nadia’s names had.

By 4 o’clock, everyone was so bad-humored that Clayton finally gave in and agreed they should eat, but his voice was tight and hollow when he spoke. “Something must have happened to her,” he said. “I really wanted us all to eat together.”

Fred rounded up the kids. The girls danced their way to the table; the adults settled themselves somewhat grimly. There was a scraping of chairs and the usual compliments about how good everything looked.

“I don’t know why we had to wait so long,” complained Mother. She surveyed the table with a critical eye. She focused in on Vesta, who was now holding the baby. “Oh, there’s my sweet little grandbaby.” She looked the child up and down. “When are they going to find you a name, hmmmmm? You’ve got to have a name. Such a shame, poor little thing!”

“I think my cousin’s so pretty,” said Rosie. “Pretty cousin!”

“My sister’s going to be blond!” Iris explained. “There’s a girl at my school with really blond hair.” She added exploratorily, “The girl is white.”

“Child needs a name,” murmured Mother into her plate. “It’s been a month now.” She looked up hard at Fred. “I thought you were going to call her after your grandmother.”

“Iris, eat your food, Iris,” said Fred warningly to his daughter. Mother maintained her sharp stare.

The doorbell rang. Almost quarter to 5. Clayton leaped up and disappeared into the hallway. Fred caught Caldonia’s eye and winked as if to say everything was all right, she should ignore Mother, ignore them all. Caldonia could hear a woman’s voice, hushed, then Clayton’s, apologetic.

A moment later, Clayton re-entered the dining room with false cheer. “Hey, hey hey!” he announced. “Everyone, can I have your attention. I’d like you all to meet someone. This is Jill.”

At first, Caldonia couldn’t see much more than a pair of brown boots and a long black coat, but when the woman stepped from the shadows, Caldonia was startled by her fine, straight hair the color of corn silk and skin the color of beaten egg white.

Caldonia immediately looked at Mother for an explanation. But Mother was placidly spooning more oyster dressing into her mouth.

“You know Vesta and my mother,” said Clayton, “and this is my sister Caldonia and her husband, Fred.”

“Hi, Jill,” called Vesta cheerfully, then turned to Caldonia with a sly smile. She was enjoying this moment thoroughly. “Isn’t she pretty? I told you she was so pretty,” she observed for Jill’s benefit.

Caldonia sat stunned. She felt betrayed, by Clayton, by Vesta, but most of all by Mother, who went right on eating. Vesta’s ignorance could almost be excused; the girl was color struck, thought all white women were pretty, had been that way since she was a child. When she watched old black-and-white movies, she was always sighing over old pale-white, dead actresses.

Fred got up from the table and took Jill’s coat. Clayton pulled out the empty chair at the end of the table for her, and Jill set about squeezing herself in between Nadia and Iris.

Still, Caldonia hadn’t said a word.

“Let her see the baby!” cried Vesta. “Show Jill the baby!”

“Let her get settled first,” Caldonia murmured. “She doesn’t need to be bothered with the baby.” She felt suddenly proprietary toward her child.

But Vesta was on a roll. “Ask Jill what she thinks about the baby.”

Anger rose in Caldonia. “I don’t need to ask Jill anything,” was what came out of her mouth, and Mother’s head shot up like a bullet.

Vesta didn’t seem to care. “Now that I think about it,” she grinned, “that could be Jill’s baby.”

Clayton was trying to change the subject, but Jill interrupted. Her voice, when she spoke, had that sharp bell-like sound like so many white women’s. “Clayton told me you just had a baby. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” said Caldonia, surprised by her own relief.

Vesta wouldn’t let up. “Jill, look at this pretty child my sister has. She’s got your coloring.”

Clayton went to work fixing Jill a plate. “Turkey? Cranberry sauce? Gravy?” He went down the list with an eagerness that filled Caldonia with loathing. Jill murmured, “Clayton, not so much, you know I’ve already eaten.’

Already eaten ! Caldonia thought; well, knock me over with a feather. Already eaten ! This, while everyone had waited so patiently, the kids getting fussier and hungrier. As if in sympathy, the baby let out a long wail on Caldonia’s lap.

“Mama!” cried Iris and Nadia simultaneously. “The baby’s crying.” It felt like an accusation.

“Bring the poor little thing over to me,” said Mother. “Let me hold her.”

Caldonia snapped back, “Not now, she needs to be fed.”

The baby began to howl full force. It was as if all the tension in the room had settled over her and drawn her little face into tight, red fury.

Jill asked Clayton to please sit down and not worry over her. Caldonia had a sudden image of Jill emerging from her brother’s bedroom and traipsing into the bathroom, dressed only in her panties and bra, in front of the children. Caldonia alternated between fury with Clayton and fury with the girl.

Fred turned to Caldonia. “Honey, want me to take the baby downstairs with me?”

“I’ll keep her,” said Caldonia. She got up from the table.

“Isn’t she just the prettiest little thing?” Vesta prodded Jill. “I think she’s so cute .”

“She’s sweet,” Jill agreed, but she was staring hopelessly at the mounds of turkey and dressing Clayton had heaped on her plate.

“I told you the baby was cute, didn’t I?” said Clayton, as if to leave no doubt about what he might have said about the child. Then, for Jill’s benefit, he launched into his version of how he’d been the one to get Caldonia to the hospital just in time.

“Don’t be tellin’ her that,” said Mother, biting into a turkey wing. “Your sister was in labor for almost 18 hours before that Chinese lady did something about it.”

“Mo-ther,” warned Caldonia.

Jill tentatively reached out one pale hand and touched the baby’s blanched skin. “I don’t get to see newborns very often,” she said.

“Let her hold the baby,” insisted Vesta. Her eyes had gone round and bright. The baby stopped crying.

“Jill’s eating,” said Caldonia, pulling the baby back against her body. “The baby’s too fussy.”

“No, it’s OK,” said Jill. She was working so hard at being polite.

Now Clayton was urging. “Come on, Caldonia, let Jill hold the baby.”

Caldonia could see she had no choice without offending everyone. She leaned down and handed the baby to Jill. Jill gathered the child against her and rocked gently from side to side, “Mmmmm, she’s so little.”

Caldonia arranged the loose-knit blanket around the baby’s body.

“Look at Jill holding the baby,” commented Mother, her turkey leg held up in one hand. “Isn’t that something.”

“The baby could be hers,” said Vesta.

Caldonia caught Fred’s eye and saw a warning there.

“They sure look a lot alike,” Mother went on, hope in her voice. She leaned across the table and studied first the baby’s face, then Jill’s. “They got that same pretty complexion, don’t you think so, Clayton? What do you think, Jill? Is that a pretty baby to you?”

Jill was trying to be polite for them all. “What’s her name?” she asked. A moment of silence followed.

“She doesn’t have one,” Mother said bitterly. “It’s been a month now, and Caldonia can’t decide what to call it.”

Caldonia felt heat rise to her face. She snapped back, “The baby’s albino,” as if that answered anything. She meant the word to sound bold, even cruel, despite the fact that the Lord would be shaking His head at her.

Clayton jumped in. “What Sis means is that she’s not sure if the baby’s eyes will have sensitivity to light. . . .”

“That’s not what I mean at all,” Caldonia said matter-of-factly. “I mean what I said; I’m upset my baby is white.” It was the first time she’d actually said it. Not to Fred, not even to herself. But now it seemed like the most natural thing to say.

The room grew very still. Fred cleared his throat. Mother murmured, “Hmmmmm mmmmmm!” disapprovingly under her breath. The children eyeballed one another with keen interest. But Jill didn’t seem to mind. She looked straight back in Caldonia’s face.

“Isn’t the albino trait inherited?” she asked.

Caldonia nodded. “It’s from Fred’s side.”

“I still think she’s pretty,” defended Vesta. “Maybe she’ll grow up and look like Jill.”

“Being albino,” said Caldonia, “is different from being. . . .” She paused. She saw no point in offending Jill. “A blond nappy head just isn’t pretty,” Caldonia heard herself saying. “That’s called funny-looking.”

Everyone laughed, except Mother, who pursed her lips and said softly, “Y’all some wrong folks!”

Caldonia bent down and retrieved the baby from Jill. “I’m afraid she’ll spit up all over you,” she said with false concern. “She looks like she might.”

“Maybe everybody’ll think the baby’s mulatto,” said Vesta, her mouth full of stuffing. “That’s what they call a white and black mix. You know, like you and Clayton.” She used her fork to gesture toward Jill, as if joining her with Clayton in midair.

“Clayton and Jill are not mulatto,” Caldonia said stonily. She felt her anger giving her direction. “Clayton is black, and Jill is white. Mulatto would be what they’d have if they had a child, Vesta. It’s not the same thing.”

“Hold on there, don’t rush us now,” said Clayton, but he said it only for Jill’s sake. His smile had broadened, his eyes brightened. Caldonia could see he rather liked the idea of having a child with Jill. And she could see by Jill’s tense but civil expression that this would never happen.

“I don’t mean nothin’,” said Vesta cheerfully. She grinned at Jill. “You know me, I’m just over here runnin’ my mouth like I usually do. My best friend in grade school was white. ‘Member her, Caldonia? Patty what’s-her-face, that big old fat girl, pretty face though.”

The baby began to fuss in Caldonia’s arms. Her bad humor quickly escalated to rage, and her face turned the color of Pepto-Bismol.

Caldonia excused herself.

“Feed the baby here,” Clayton called after her.

But the truth was, Caldonia didn’t want to nurse her youngest child near a stranger. She pulled shut the louvered doors that separated the kitchen and dining room. She sat down in one of the vinyl-backed kitchen chairs and arranged the baby’s pink mouth at her brown breast.

The louvered doors opened ever so slightly and Fred squeezed through. If he was annoyed with Caldonia he didn’t show it. Instead, he bent down and kissed the nursing baby. “You know I love you,” he whispered in her tiny shell-pink ear, “even if your mama’s actin’ crazy.”

Caldonia had to smile in spite of herself. She hummed softly to the pink and yellow child. When Fred went out again, Caldonia caught a glimpse of Clayton’s slender brown fingers caressing Jill’s pale arm, and the stiffening of that arm as Jill carefully and surreptitiously moved just out of reach. It was a simple gesture, designed not to embarrass Clayton in front of his family.

Caldonia looked down at her youngest daughter. She didn’t know which was worse, going through life toward blindness or going through life white. In a way, it was kind of the same thing. How was her daughter going to feel, this little pale stalk in a dark field?

Iris and Nadia let themselves into the kitchen.

“Close the door!” Caldonia hissed.

“Mama, we love our sister,” said Iris pointedly.

“Well, of course you do!” Caldonia hadn’t meant to give the girls a wrong impression.

“We could put her in the sun,” suggested Nadia helpfully. “She could get a tan and be like us.”

The two girls ran their hands over the baby’s little pink ones and cooed at her.

“She is like us,” Caldonia corrected. “She is us.”

“Excuse me. . . .”

Caldonia’s head shot up. The voice was clear and precise. It was Jill, first poking her head through the kitchen door and then standing in the kitchen doorway, small and white, not much taller than Nadia and Iris. Caldonia quickly covered her breast.

“I want to thank you for having me,” Jill said softly. “And I’m sorry about all the inconvenience and the mix-up.”

For a moment, before she was able to line up her thoughts, Caldonia actually thought the girl was apologizing for the absence of the baby’s color. “The mix-up?” said Caldonia vaguely. She reached for the right words. “Clayton’s friends are always welcome,” she said. “Come back any time.”

“I will.” The girl smiled, and Caldonia knew they both were thinking how this would not happen. “Thank you,” said the girl, relieved and forgiven, as if Caldonia had the power to do that.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN THE DISHES had been washed, the kitchen swept and the children put to bed, Caldonia asked Fred tentatively, “Do you think it would be foolish to name the baby Ebony?”

Fred burst out laughing. “Girl, what are you talking about?”

“I want to give my child a real name,” said Caldonia.

“That’s real all right,” he chuckled. “What is wrong with you, Caldonia? You can’t make her black, you know. Naming her Ebony is as bad as naming a dark child Pearl, or Magnolia. We should call her Angela, after my grandmother.”

“I just want her to know. . . .” Caldonia began stupidly, “I just want her to feel. . . .”

Fred looked at her long and hard. “She is , Caldonia,” was all he said before he went upstairs and turned on the news.

Caldonia stood next to the sink under the framed “God Bless This Mess” sampler Mother had made for her last Christmas. God, thought Caldonia wistfully, in His infinite wisdom, has given me this child without a name. She wasn’t blaming God; she wasn’t blaming anyone but herself for the mean pinch in her heart that prevented her from running right upstairs and calling the child by her rightful name.