Selena Kitt - Grace

Leah stared at herself in the mirror, her long, dark hair falling in carefully set waves over her shoulders, down the back of the dress. She would probably have it put up for the wedding, depending on the type of veil she chose.

“Do you have a veil for this dress?” she asked, smoothing the fabric over her middle. She was two sizes larger than she’d been before Grace, and her body was still resuming its original shape, although she was beginning to wonder if it would make it all the way back. She needed to start dancing again.

“It’s divine. Stay here.” Irene disappeared again and Leah touched the lace at her throat, marveling at the gorgeous handiwork. What would Rob be thinking when she walked down the aisle in this dress, she wondered? How long it would be before he could get me out of it. She giggled at the thought, cheeks flushing. She’d thought a great deal about her wedding when she was young, but never her honeymoon. Now she was looking forward to both.

“Here we are!” The veil was a delicate, Juliet cap affair that Irene clipped into place, fluffing the veil over Leah’s face, arranging. “Oh my goodness, what a beautiful bride you make!”

Leah blushed at the compliment, following Irene out of the dressing room and down the hallway. She heard Erica’s gasp before she saw her wide eyes and the bemused smile starting on her face. When Leah looked over at her mother, she saw with wonder and a little bit of awe, that she had tears in her eyes.

She stepped toward the three-way mirror, the train of material following her, looking at herself in amazement. She’d been transformed from an ordinary girl to a goddess with one simple costume change. Irene urged her up on the pedestal so she could arrange the train and veil behind her. Erica crowded next to Leah, looking at their reflection side by side in the mirror, her eyes damp too.

“I feel like a fairy princess,” Leah whispered, taking Erica’s hand in hers and squeezing.

“You look like one,” her mother assured her, stepping into view on Leah’s other side, going up on tiptoe to brush her daughter’s cheek with a soft kiss. Leah couldn’t remember the last time her mother had kissed her.

Leah met her mother’s eyes in the mirror, not as a daughter looking at her mother, but as a woman meeting the eyes of another woman. They had far more common ground than Leah ever had wanted to admit as a teenager, but she saw it and understood it now in one glance. Patty Wendt was a woman and a mother. How could Leah fault her for hardening her heart in a world that treated her like a piece of property, that used and defiled her, that abused and demeaned her at every turn?

Leah lived in that world too. Nothing had changed. But her mother had loved her and had tried to protect her from it all along, just like Leah loved Grace and she knew she would do everything in her power to protect her daughter from the same mistakes she’d made. Funny how the universe repeated patterns ad infinitum, generation after generation, until someone finally turned around and started walking in the other direction.

She felt her mother’s hand slip into hers and Leah squeezed it, smiling. She would never know who her real father was. She didn’t have a father to walk her down the aisle and give her away. But she had her mother, and she knew, finally, that her mother really did love her.

“Mom, Erica’s going to be my maid of honor.” Leah smiled at her friend, feeling tears pricking her eyes. “But I was wondering if you would walk me down the aisle and give me away?”

“Oh Leah…” Patty Wendt’s face crumbled, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I never wanted to give you away.”

Leah smiled. “Is that a no?”

“No, sweetheart.” Leah’s mother opened her pocketbook, looking for a tissue. “Of course I will. It’s just… you’ll always be my little girl.”

“What church are you getting married at?” Irene asked, smiling and fluffing up her veil.

Leah sighed, shaking her head.

“We’ll figure something out,” Leah’s mother said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “To hell with Father Patrick.”

Erica and Leah looked at each other in the mirror, eyes wide and mouths open. Then they both burst out laughing, and Patty looked between them, a smile forming at the corners of her mouth. That turned into a snicker, and then laughter. The three of them couldn’t stop, even though the other bride and her party were staring at them and whispering. It just made them laugh harder, forcing Patty Wendt to dab at her eyes again, using the tissue to wipe away tears of laughter from her eyes this time.

Curiosity killed the cat. That’s what kept going through Erica’s mind as Clay drove down the back roads of the ironically named Paradise Alley, the black ghetto between the Detroit river in the south and Grand Boulevard to the north, at a crawling five miles an hour with the lights of his Sedan off, the passenger side window cranked all the way down, making Erica shiver in the frigid December air, what was left of a pile of rolled up newspapers between them at one in the morning.

“Do you always deliver them like this?” Erica whispered as if the people sleeping in the houses and tenements could hear them.

“Have to.” Clay slowed to a near stop, grabbing a paper and leaning across her, tossing it with the velocity and aim a major league baseball player would have been impressed by, hitting the front porch stoop square on. “They’re called ‘underground’ papers for a reason. I could be arrested for writing most of this stuff, let alone distributing them.”

“Wouldn’t your parents just throw a fit?”

“Oh hell yes.”

“Is it worth it?” Erica picked up one of the papers, sliding the rubber band off the end and opening it up. It was too dark to read much, but when she held it up in the dashboard light, she saw the headline read, Detroit Plans for ‘Negro Removal.’

“Sit back.” Clay slowed again, grabbing a rolled paper and tossing it. This one missed the stoop and ended up in the bushes next to the porch.

“You missed.”

“You were distracting me in that blouse. Button it up, would you? At least until we’re done?”

Erica grinned, looking down at the cleavage showing and reached for her buttons, slowly unbuttoning one more so that her bra was showing, looking straight at him the whole while. Clay groaned.

“What’s this about ‘Negro Removal?’”

“Urban renewal project plans to tear down all of Black Bottom and Paradise Alley. They’ve already razed a bunch of housing near the river. They call it ‘eradicating blight.’ Yeah, they’re eradicating blight all right-they’re getting rid of the negros in one fell swoop.”

Erica frowned, squinting at the article in the darkness. “But the news said it was a good thing. Something about increasing tax revenue, improving living conditions. You have to admit, some of these houses are pretty shabby. Aren’t they planning on building nice, new high-rises for them?”

“For them? ” Clay snorted. “Is that how you think of Solie? She’s one of them? ”

“Well… no… I…” Erica floundered, flustered, flushing red in the thankful dimness. Solie was like part of her family, had been for years. She was the closest thing she had to a mother since her own mother had died. But she was ashamed to think that she didn’t know much about Solie’s life outside of the Nolans. Erica knew she had children, a husband who worked at a factory. But that was about it.

“Can you be that naive?” Clay grabbed another paper, leaning over her to toss it angrily out of the window. “They gave the people living down by the river thirty-days notice to vacate their homes. Then they tore them down to the ground. But they don’t have plans to build on the land at all! That empty area they call Cobo Field now? It’s just sitting there. ‘Urban development’ is just code for ‘Negro Removal.’ They’re trying to get rid of their ‘negro problem’ without creating any solution at all.”