Paint It Black

Chapter Twenty-six

Louis took a sip of coffee and set the cup on the small patio table. He was sitting forward on a lounge chair, his feet planted on either side of him, the files from the NAACP guys, Mills and Seaver, spread in front of him.

He could feel the sun climbing up his back, and checked his watch. It was almost seven A.M.

He picked up another folder, this one thick and banded with fat rubber bands. These were “tips,” names of possible weirdos, offered by their mothers, brothers, sisters, and ex-wives. My old boyfriend has a knife collection and hates black people. My neighbor once threatened to throw acid on the black guy down the block.

He was trying to find a link-any link-between the NAACP list and the tips. But he wondered if he was wasting time.

He’s black, Emily had said.

How could she be so sure?

He heard the sliding door open and looked up. Margaret was heading his way with a coffeepot. Her hair dangled with loose rollers and her cotton robe fluttered in the morning breeze.

She refilled his cup and set four sugars on the table.

“How long have you been up?” she asked.

He pulled off his reading glasses and rubbed his face. “Since four. Thanks for the refill.”

“I can throw on a few eggs, if you want.”

“That’s okay, I can eat later.”

Louis slipped his glasses back on, but could see her pink slippers out of the corner of his eyes. He looked up at her again.

“Really, I’m fine, Margaret.”

“Louis, did it ever occur to you that I like taking care of you? I like cooking for you and Sam.”

He took off his glasses again. “I don’t want you to fuss, that’s all.”

She sat down in the chair across from him. “It’s what I do. People have things they just do. You read those awful things and chase killers, I take care of people.”

He smiled. “Well, then, I will take some eggs.”

She didn’t move. He started to put his glasses back on, but stopped, afraid she would take it as a dismissal.

“You need to let people take care of you sometimes, Louis,” she said gently. “I heard you mention your foster mother the other day. I didn’t know you were a foster child. When Sam told me why you went back to Mississippi, I just assumed that’s where you were raised. What was she like, your foster mother?”

He straightened, setting his glasses on the files. “Her name is Frances. And she did take good care of me, Margaret,” he said.

“As much as you would let her, right?”

Louis glanced toward the canal. Suddenly he remembered hanging over a toilet, sicker than a damn dog from the flu. He had locked both his foster parents out of the bathroom and had fallen asleep in his thin pajamas on the cold floor. Phillip had finally removed the lock to get in and carried him to bed.

There had been other locks, too. Locks that came after the one time Louis tried to run away. He was ten and had been with the Lawrences for less than a year. He took ten dollars from Frances’s purse and jumped out the bedroom window at midnight. When he tried to buy a bus ticket to Mississippi, the clerk had called the police. Hours later, Phillip had shown up at the police station and brought him home. He didn’t know at the time that his actions normally would have sent him straight back into the system. He didn’t know that Phillip had pleaded with child services to give Louis a second chance. All he knew is that there were now locks on his bedroom windows. “We put them there because we want you to stay, Louis,” Frances had told him. He never tried to leave again.

He looked back at Margaret. “Yeah, she took care of me. As much as I would let her, yes.”

Margaret smiled. “You know, Sam and I talked about taking in foster kids, but I didn’t think I could bear to let them go home,” she said. “Plus, Black Pool didn’t have much of that kind of thing.”

She paused. “Did you have lots of brothers and sisters coming and going through the house?”

He knew she meant foster kids, kids he refused to make friends with, because even after he realized he wasn’t going anywhere, he knew they were. But two others came to mind, too. A skinny kid with skin as dark as coffee beans and a big girl with a stiff ponytail and bright red lipstick-lipstick stolen from his mother’s purse.

“I have a brother and sister,” he said, immediately surprised that he had said anything. “When my family was split up, they stayed in Black Pool. They went to relatives.”

Margaret didn’t ask why.

“You should look them up,” she said instead. “You can’t ever replace family or friends.”

He nodded. Another image came to mind. He was small, very small, and his sister Yolanda was putting curlers in his hair. He smiled. God, she’d be what. . thirty-five now? Hell, he probably had nephews or nieces somewhere. And Robert would be thirty-one. Gulfport. That’s where he’d heard they’d gone.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I should.”

Issy strolled over to them and hopped onto Margaret’s lap. The cat stared at Louis and he thought he detected a smirk.

“What about your friend who gave you the cat?” Margaret asking, stroking Issy.

She was fishing, he knew that. She was trying so hard to find out if there was a woman in his life-or had been.

“It didn’t work out,” he said simply.

“But you kept her cat,” Margaret said.

He didn’t answer.

Margaret smiled. “Well, it’s nice to keep a part of something you lost,” she said. “I have a baby blanket my grandmother gave me when I was pregnant. We lost the baby, but I couldn’t get rid of the blanket, even after the doctor told me I wouldn’t ever have more babies. What he said was just words. The blanket was something real.”

Louis sensed she expected him to say something. “It must have been hard,” he said. “I mean, as much as you wanted children.”

“We were lucky,” Margaret said. “We had enough of each other to keep going. But there are still nights we talk about how our lives might have been different.”

He was silent. He wasn’t thinking about Margaret and Sam now, or even about about Zoe and Michigan. He was thinking about Kyla, the girl he had gotten pregnant in college.

How can you say it’s not yours, Louis?

It can’t be, he had told her. But he was thinking, It ruins everything. I’m twenty years old and I don’t want this.

I’ll leave then, Louis. I’ll get rid of it.

Go, he had thought.

“Louis?”

Margaret was talking to him, bringing him back. “That’s why Sam likes you here,” she said.

He looked at her. “I’m sorry?”

She touched his arm. “Sam,” she said. “He likes having you here.”

Louis didn’t trust himself to say anything.

She rose, setting Issy aside. “I’ll go get your eggs going now,” she said.

The cat sat on the floor for a moment, staring up at him, then trotted after Margaret.