MOVING
"Well, it always rains when you move," Sassy Parker said, and Rachel could practically hear Sassy's smoker's lungs vacuuming up the air in one terrific whoosh as they lifted the long cardboard box around the corner through the front door. Sassy's short afro-styled hair glistened with the rain as if it barely concealed diamonds among the black curls. Both women were soaked to the skin; when they were safely inside the downstairs hall, Rachel set down the large cardboard box and ran upstairs and into the townhouse.
She returned a few seconds later with towels.
“You didn't tell me you have a tenant." Sassy nodded towards 1201 -B's mailbox.
"Penelope Deerfield, she's a nice lady," Rachel said, flopping a pink towel over Sassy's head. Rachel squeezed the water out of her hair and shook it out like a wet dog coming inside. "These summer storms." She had changed out of her business clothes after she'd left the office at ten, just stopping in there to drop off some papers. She had scrounged through their packed suitcases and come up with these painter's pants, and one of Hugh's smelly old basketball T-shirts; the rain seemed to coax the odor of the gymnasium right out from the armpits. Rachel combed her wet, squeaky hair back into a ponytail, tying it up with a rubber band. She felt more like a twenty-eight-year-old bobby soxer than a junior associate with the firm of Newton, Bancroft & Hamer.
"Remember Barbie's best friend Midge? That’s who you remind me of, Retch," Sassy said, laughing. Sassy was taller than Rachel by about four inches; Rachel had always figured her friend was pushing six feet. They'd been roommates as undergraduates, and Sassy seemed to be the only girlfriend of Rachel's who truly understood her. As well as her craving for nicotine. Sassy had been working at the Washington Herald-Tribune, the third-rated newspaper in the city, but had moved up quickly and now ran the "Home" section, which sponsored an annual house tour through the old neighborhoods of D.C. Rachel hoped that one day Draper House would be on that tour. Once we get it fixed up. Normally, Sassy looked pretty glamorous, "as every big city assistant editor of trash newspapers should," Sassy would herself have said, but right now, dressed in baggy chinos and a white cotton blouse ("Looks like something out of the Victoria Secret catalog," she said, glancing down at the damp material which seemed to have molded to the shape of her breasts), Sassy looked simple and unassuming. She drew a damp cigarette out of her breast pocket. She snipped off the end between her long red fingernails and slid it into her mouth. The cigarette drooped. "I suppose this is as good a time as any to go cold turkey." Rachel envied Sassy's ability to ignore things like the surgeon general's warnings and continue to smoke; Rachel desired a cigarette even now when she knew she shouldn't have one. The image came up: Daddy coughing, knowing his lungs were pockmarked with cancer.
"So you have a nice setup, Mrs. Adair," Sassy laughed.
"In the ghetto, we used to call a place like this 'honky heaven.' You have a patio, a house, a renter, what more could a girl want?"
"A ghost."
"A what?"
"We have a ghost -really. It's supposed to be the original owner of the house, Rose Draper, a courtesan to the political world of the nineteenth century. Mrs. Deerfield says that she's heard her walking the halls."
"Maybe we can get your ghost to help us with all this junk." Sassy squatted down to try and lift her end of the box up. "I never thought records could be so bleeping heavy." Rachel nodded. "Not just ordinary records, Hugh's collection of Big Band. He finally gave up trying to teach me the jitterbug in law school, so now he listens to them when I'm not around."
“You were always more of a disco kind of girl, weren't you?"
"Please," Rachel groaned with the suggestion and the weight of the box. When they'd gone up the flight of stairs, Rachel leaned her end of the box on the new sofa that had been delivered on Tuesday. "Here, let's set this down for a minute."
"Amen to that."
"Gently, gently, these are his babies, remember, the only thing his mother left him that he treats -Now why are you looking at me like that?"
"I was just wondering what a nice white girl like you is doing in this neighborhood. Used to be, six, seven years ago, all the winos on the block hung out on this front stoop and tossed their cookies in the hallway."
"A sobering thought."
"When I was fourteen, my mom would bring me down here because there was some old doctor who lived down the end of the block, and he was real cheap, and then I'd sit in the park and wait for her. I was scared to death of this street -old men used to try to get me to go with them, winking at me and then spitting like it was going to make them irresistible. How times do change, Retch, how they change. The alley behind your place was called Dealer's Alley, and there was a string of red lights up in one of these apartment places, and they weren't on nobody's Christmas tree." Sassy looked out the French doors onto the alley -it was now a parking lot for the various occupants of Hammer Street. "Still looks like you could buy your drugs back there, I guess."
"I still have my supply of antidepressants," Rachel said.
"I wonder how much any of those pills are worth on the street?" Sassy glanced around the room. “You know, Retch, I'll bet we've even got something in research on this neighborhood -I've got so much shit in my files I wouldn't be surprised if Draper House is in there. God, my mind is a banquet of trivial facts from that job! And to think, I used to love reading newspapers."
"This alley is pretty depressing," Rachel said, grabbing her friend by the arm. "The best room is down the hall -it may be one of the best views in the city."
They went down the long hall to the turret room. Hugh had Windexed the windows to the point where Rachel noticed the paper towel streaks on the glass; the walls still needed painting, and there was Hugh's collection of Sherwin-Williams paints all ready for the job. The floor creaked as they walked, and Sassy went out of her way to find the locations of all the creaking boards. When they entered the turret room, Rachel was suddenly aware again of that dungeon look -it seemed dark, cold, and damp. The wallpaper was drab and full of swirling paisleylike designs, reminding her of an awful wide tie her father used to wear. Even with the convex window being so large, the light that came in from outside was like a fog. She switched on the overhead light.
"We still haven't gotten around to putting up drapes yet."
“You could have affairs up here and see Hugh coming a mile off," Sassy joked. "There's that park. I used to sit in there when I was little -scared to death that some druggie or psycho was going to grab me. Or a pervert -"
"Back then, I don't think I even saw D.C., my folks kept us safely in the 'burbs."
"Yeah, back then even us black folks used to roll up the window and lock the door when we drove through here.
They call this park Winthrop Park -sounds pretty white bread doesn't it -but when I was in school it was still known as Needle Park, like every other park in the city.
When I was a teenager, I'm telling you, I thought that as soon as I was old enough I was going to hightail it to the suburbs and become a white girl because I thought if this is what being black means, it's time for an update, you know what I'm talking about? Now, look at this whole neighborhood: people pay as much for a parking space as I do for rent!
If only I'd known back then, girl, I'd have become a real estate entrepreneur."
"But this block has been owned by Hugh's family for years. I'm sure after all that time of losing money on it, it's a welcome change…"
“You're telling me Hugh's daddy has owned this street since when?" Rachel shrugged. "Maybe the thirties or forties. Sometime after World War II."
"I'd rather have had a corner of Hell than this place." Sassy raised her eyebrows as she scanned the rain-swept park, and then nodded at the window. "Look at her." Rachel came closer to the turret window; she felt an icy shiver run through her and she didn't know why -it had felt for a second like someone had stroked his fingers down the back of her neck. She put her hand to her shoulders, rubbing the nape of her neck; it was nothing -she'd been thinking it was going to be one of the gross cockroaches she'd seen in the kitchen.
Sassy said, "That’s so sad; she doesn't even know to come in out of the rain."
Rachel followed Sassy's gaze down through the dripping trees and puddles of the park until she saw what Sassy was talking about. An old black bag woman was muttering to herself, glancing occasionally up at them and shaking her fist, shouting something that could not be heard through the rain and the window.
"Jesus," Rachel gasped.
“You know her?"
"It looks like the same woman who peed on the sidewalk the first day I saw the house. I didn't think she'd be a regular." Sassy turned away from the window. "It's the mental hospitals; they're full, and so they release these people. It's positively criminal. You know it's like they're invisible people, that they're somehow not real. Like she was born like that, full grown, with her shopping cart and trash bags.
But she's probably just like this neighborhood, you know, she's got a history. Everybody's got a history."