Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (26 page)

B
lanche told everyone she needed a breather, so she was going to visit some friends in South Carolina. It wasn't true, of course. She was on her way to Boston to stay with Cousin Charlotte. She also hadn't told folks that she never expected to return to Farleigh, not even to get her kids. Ardell would bring Taifa and Malik to her when the time came. She hadn't told folks the whole truth because she thought it was best for her to be in a state of plans-and-whereabouts-unknown.

She'd be in Boston by the time the story broke in the
Atlanta Constitution
. The reporter had assured her that her name would not be mentioned, but Archibald would know. What would Archibald think when he realized he'd paid her all that money and she'd hardly gotten out the door before she was asking around for a reporter a person could halfway trust? Of course, she hadn't promised to keep her mouth shut, and she wasn't responsible for Archibald's assumptions. Aggravation pay, not hush money. She'd known all along that she could not keep quiet.

Her major goal had been to make sure that everyone around knew just how crazy Grace was, as a way of ensuring that she stayed locked up, for Nate's sake. It wasn't much, and it might not work, but it was all that she could think to do that would not land her in jail. She wondered whether Lucille would surface when it all came out. Archibald's boys had never been able to find Lucille, but Miz Minnie knew where she was. Miz Minnie had also found out, from the woman hired to look after Mumsfield, that Grace had tried to kill Everett with her favorite wrench. He'd managed
to throw her out of the car but had been knocked out when the car swerved into a ravine. After Grace had left him for dead in the car, he'd managed to get the car out of the ravine and hightail it to Atlanta in a panic. He'd since collected his clothes and whatever else he could get. Archibald had refused to give him any money, and Mumsfield had refused to see him or allow him to spend the night in the house. Everett had taken off for no one knew where. Blanche didn't mind that he'd gotten away. He was broke, prison enough for him, and he hadn't hurt anyone she cared about. Except Mumsfield, she added as an afterthought. She understood that his Down's syndrome made him as recognizably different from the people who ran and owned the world as she. It was this similarity that made him visible to her inner eye and eligible for her concern.

Their parting had been very sad. There was no way she could explain how the last six days had confirmed her constitutional distaste for being any white man's mammy, no matter what she thought of the man in question, or how many fancy titles and big salaries were put on the job. But while their parting was very sad, it was different from what she'd expected. She'd braced herself for his tears and pleading, his pitiful need for her. There had been tears in his eyes, but they'd stayed unshed. He'd neither pleaded nor looked pitiful.

“I understand, Blanche,” he'd told her. “I understand.” And for two seconds she'd thought that somehow he'd leaped across the gap between them and truly knew what it meant to be a black woman trying to control her own life and stand firm against having her brain vanillaed. She knew that she would think of him often, wonder what had become of him, how he'd aged. But she hoped never to see him or anyone connected to his family again.

Outside the bus window, trees and fields and farmhouses rushed by, as though running away from the skyscrapers, subways, and nightclubs she was moving toward. She'd thought
about flying up to Boston but decided to use every nickel of the money Archibald had given her for Malik and Taifa's education.

She leaned back in her seat. She felt battered, as though the last six days had been one long fist fight that she hadn't exactly lost, but in which she'd been knocked about so badly that the way she saw and thought about things had been forever altered, although she couldn't yet put her finger on exactly how. She did know that while once she would have looked forward to city life, she was now approaching Boston as yet another enemy territory. It seemed that enemy territory was all there was in this country for someone who looked like her. She had nowhere else to go—at least to make a living—except among those who disdained her to death.

She knew she would step lightly again, dance, joke, laugh. She would always be a woman who'd come too close to murder, who knew what it meant to actually fear for her life. But, of course, that wasn't all of it. She smiled again at the memory of Grace lying unconscious at her feet. She would also always be a woman who'd fought for her life and won. That woman, no matter how much she'd changed, was still capable of negotiating enemy territory—even without a reference from her most recent employer.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Blanche has had more mamas and midwives than a small nation, and I thank each and every one of them, most especially Jeremiah Cotton for his unflagging support, Kate White for her tireless editing, Helen Crowell for explaining Mosaicism to me, as well as Maxine Alexander, Taifa Bartz, Babs Bigham, Donna Bivens, Dick Cluster, Shelley Evans, Roz Feldberg, Charlene Gilbert, Lucy Marx, Ann, Vanessa, and Bryan Neely, and Barbara Taylor for their careful reading and invaluable comments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barbara Neely's short fiction has appeared in various anthologies, including
Breaking Ice, Things That Divide Us, Angels of Power, Speaking for Ourselves,
and
Test Tube Women.
She lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachussetts, where she is working on the next Blanche White mystery.