again Kelly. Neither is my family.” “That event happened over fifteen years ago. It still haunts me.”
“And I’m sho’ it drove mama to tha grave even quicker than she was headed,” the young maid quips.
Kelly watches as Sally began to pace the grand bathroom, her eyes steaming with a silent fury as they stare down to imported pink marble.
Swinging her head around to a misty eyed Kelly, Sally’s pretty face is a mask of pure frustration. “If I was a man, I would be expected to do something.”
“Hell it would be my duty,” the maid says quickly.
Kelly understands her friend’s point of view, she really does.
As much as the flapper wants to put a gun or trusty razor in her spirit sister’s hands, letting her do what God would not. Both woman live in Jim Crow South Carolina. Slick and Benjamin are not always around to save the day.
The young flapper listens to Sally, but her point has to be made as well.
“Yes my love, I understand. But you are a black woman. If they catch you ?,” the young blonde expresses, suddenly breaking into tears.
With her creamy pale cheeks turning beet red, Kelly splashes water on her face. As if to hide her tears even from herself.
“Do you know what they did to that woman in front of me ?”
“Now you wanna end up just like her - huh girl ?”
Sally looks down to her employer with her hands on her hips. A woman whom understands her plight living in the skin that she is in, if only by empathy and friendship.
“I aint gon’ be no damn girl Kelly Anne,” Sally grins through tears.
Glad for the humor, Kelly grins as well.
“Uh-hum. Then stop with little girl thoughts.”
“Little girl thoughts. Is this what you say ?,” Sally issues.
Walking to the far end of the bathroom, the maid’s mind races. As the pretty cinnamon colored woman thinks back, tears form once again. Threatening her pride and gumption.
Secretly, washing slowly, Kelly watches with a small smile as her plan reveals itself flawlessly. The idea of revenge has to be Sally’s. The need for blood has to be her’s alone.
Looking out a bathroom window to the dark streets below, Sally thinks back to one of her uncles. His rotting twisted body swinging in an afternoon sun beaming bright, a horrid visage that stays with her till this very night.
The young man’s skin was once beautiful and deep, always shimmering with power. When relatives found his body after a week, it was moldy and rotting, black and putrid. A man always with a beautiful smile, teeth as white as seashells. Sally remembers that the teeth had all been kicked out of the corpse’s twisted mouth. Brown eyes that were always kind, bulged out sickly. One peeked away by crows.
Looking past the present, sally tries to get the memory out of her head as her back strengthens.
With her feet planted firmly, the maid swings around to her mistress.
“Either ya’ help me or not. If I end up like that girl. So be it.”
“But rest assured Kelly Anne. One of em gon’ be in hell before they get me.”
Secretly Kelly’s heart jumps for joy as she witnesses her best friend blossom into a murderess right before her very eyes. Witnessing Sally’s strength, the power in her brown eyes. It is a formidable experience for the young flapper.
“Why?,” the flapper asks half heartedly. She must keep up pretense.
“The menfolk are going to do as told.”
“Yeah hun - but what about tha’ woman. Us ?,” Sally asks, sitting back down to a gob-smacked Kelly.
“The woman-why hun?,” the blonde asks, washing.
Secretly the young woman does not need a reason, but the idea has to be cemented in Sally’s logic. Almost there.
Sally looks upon her Kelly, telling a story even the socialite did not know.
It happened years ago, when the two women were girls in two different worlds, yet in the same town.
The young assistant relates to Kelly that one of her uncles, Cleo Hargrove. A brilliant black man of distinct beauty and flair, killed for no other reason than pride.
Once the talk of black South Carolina, the dynamic man was the relative that first put the idea of college in the young woman’s head.
Cleo was a proud man, down from Harlem in New York. The new Mecca of black thought and genius.
Sally relates to Kelly that her mother told her that there was trouble as soon as Cleo arrived in South Carolina. From the train station, there were evil glares about his fine suit and elegance.
One white man even spit on Cleo’s fine shoes. But the proud man kept his head up high.
As Kelly sits back in the tub, fixated, Sally runs her more hot water. The assistant tells of the time her Uncle Cleo was in the general store with her mother.
“Thats when that vampish evil bitch saw my uncle.”
Kelly looks up, her brow furrowed. ‘Who hun. Who?”
Sally looks past her boss woman as her eyes seem to heat with hate and revenge.
“Vennessa McClaren.”
“Lawd, I hate that woman.”
“She saw my uncle and wanted him for herself right then and there,” Sally seethes, her blood boiling like lava.
Kelly washes as she turns from Sally. Seeing her beloved with such a look on her face hurts the flapper to her core, like fresh tiny paper cuts across her soul. If the sordid vamp Sally just named was in the room. Kelly would drown the bitch in scented bath water with little more than sighs and content girlish giggles.
Kelly gets the delicious thought out of her mind. Pretenses must be kept.
“And your uncle said no dear ..... ?” she asks gently.
Sally nods with more tears in her eyes.
“You see -,” the young woman starts, then stops.
“Uncle was a ....a confirmed bachelor. He was special,” Sally laments.
Kelly only nods with a gentle smile. Some of their best friends are these special men Sally speak of. Kind souls with sexual interest that are more geared toward their own kind.
