delivery truck Juan Miguel had bought from a junkman on Euclid Avenue for five hundred dollars two years earlier. The red letters on the left side of the truck still screamed, WONDER BREAD, glowing through the cheap white paint he’d smeared across it last spring.
Luscious would watch from the bench that sat closest to the doorway. The one she’d claimed as her own so many years ago. It was her throne, and in warm weather she could be found there most of the day and well into the night.
She was the queen of 256 Stanley Avenue, Brookline Projects.
Everyone knew Luscious, and Luscious knew everyone.
She’d arrived there from Detroit in 1953. Back then, the apartments were still filled with white people, the courtyards with colorful blooms that lasted from April straight through to October.
The benches unmarked, well-lit hallways, working elevators, and clean stairwells.
Neighbors bidding you hello or good night, and even asking about that ailing family member they’d heard about.
Back then, Luscious was hefty but still considered a good-looking woman. Green-eyed and honey-colored with soft wavy hair that rested on her shoulders.
Like Brookline Projects, Luscious would change, and her beauty would become a shadow of what it once was. Her weight would bloom from two hundred to four, and her skin would hang in folds, her beauty retreating into the creases of her flesh, and Luscious would look every bit the hog people began to refer to her as.
* * *
In 1975, on Campbell’s moving day, Luscious sits and watches over the broken pavement on a blemished bench beside Campbell and her closest friends: Pat, Anita, Porsche, and Laverna.
The girls have been together since nursery school, and they would be together in one form or another throughout their adult lives, but on that sweltering July day, Campbell was fragmenting their circle, leaving them behind and moving what seemed to them miles away—to another part of Brooklyn.
Luscious nudges Campbell’s waist and winks at the girls. “So will you come and visit us? Or will you forget all about us once you’re gone?” she asks.
The girls look at Campbell expectantly.
“Uh-huh,” she replies, and slurps up the last bit of soda from the can. “Y’all gonna come and visit me?” Campbell poses the same question.
“Hmmm, maybe,” Luscious says nonchalantly, and starts to examine the chipped pink polish on her fingernails while the girls rapidly nod their heads.
Luscious’s response forces the loose smile on Campbell’s face to fall away. The girls twist their mouths and give each other the I-told-you-she-was-mean look.
“Maybe?” Campbell questions, and her bottom lip drops in disappointment.
The corners of Luscious’s mouth tremble, and a light not often seen dances in her eyes, and Campbell knows she’s kidding and happily exclaims, “Yeah, you will!” and all of them break down with laughter.
More furniture sails past them, and then the black Hefty bags heavy with clothes and shoes.
“No, we don’t need any help, Campbell,” Millie says sarcastically as she makes her hundredth trip past them. “Yours neither, Rita,” she slings at Luscious.
“Good thing for you!” Luscious yells back at Millie. “Your mama always gotta be starting with someone,” she says to Campbell, and rolls her eyes.
“Here, Campbell, go on over to the store and get me a bag of potato chips, a Pepsi cola, and some Now and Laters,” she says, and stuffs a dollar into her hand.
The girls give Luscious a quick look and then drop their eyes to their sneakers.
Luscious considers them for a moment and pulls another dollar from her bosom. “Get your little friends something too.”
* * *
They move into a brownstone on Bainbridge Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The house is old and leans to one side, but Millie don’t seem to mind that or the fact that all three fireplaces are sealed.
“They don’t even work no more,” Fred says. But Millie doesn’t care; she likes them, working or not. She’s content with just looking at them and admiring the intricately carved wooden mantels. Those mantels will help to occupy her thoughts, and she can forget that Fred cheats and hardly ever reaches for her anymore at night.
She will keep those mantels dust free and glowing and won’t even complain when Fred measures the floors for wall-to-wall carpeting. “It’ll save on the heating bill,” he says.
Campbell waves bye-bye to the beautiful design in the wood floors and looks up at the twelve-foot-high ceilings and wonders about what’s living in the cobwebs that occupy all the corners above her head and if her new room is far enough away to block out the sound of her mother’s weeping.
* * *
When they purchased the house, they inherited the tenant, Clyde Walker, a squat man with red-brown skin and bulging eyes.
Fred advised him that he would have to go up on his rent by fifteen dollars.
“Well, I ain’t about to pay no more than I been paying. Been paying too much already. Floors squeak, pipes leak, had pneumonia every winter I been here. Drafty, oil burner work when it want to. Cold water freezing, hot water cold. I ain’t paying no more than I been paying.”
“So I guess you’ll be leaving, then,” Fred said real quiet-like before reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulling out his pack of Winstons.
“Guess so,” Clyde Walker said just as quietly, and closed his door.
A week later he was gone.
Campbell was more than happy for that. She had encountered him a few times sitting out on the front stoop, his back resting against the step, his hands working at something deep inside the pockets of his pants, his mouth toiling away at the red-and-white-striped peppermints he constantly sucked on.
“Hello, pretty girl,” he would say, but his words were oil slick, and something about the sound of his voice and the way he looked at her made Campbell’s skin crawl.
Yes, she was more than happy to see him lumbering down the sidewalk, suitcase in one hand, overcoat in the other, goodbye and so long sailing over his shoulder.
Good riddance!
Two weeks after that, Clarence Simon rang the bell and inquired about the sign Millie had placed in the front window: Apartment for Rent.
Millie showed it to him, moving through the small space, pointing out things like the women that showed the prizes on The Price Is Right: “And here we have . . .” “The bathroom is over to the left . . .” “The rug was just shampooed and the windows cleaned . . .” She spoke softly as she glided through the house with her practiced smile. “Already furnished, but still plenty of room for anything you might have,” she said as she admired Clarence’s long lean body and dark, neat suit.
“Two hundred a
