Angela Flournoy - The Turner House

Daylight flooding the front room halted her on the first-floor landing. Lelah knew that nearly all of the furniture in the house had been divvied up, save for the old bed and dresser in the big room, which no one had wanted. It hadn’t occurred to her that the walls would be bare too. Dozens of brown outlines on the yellow wallpaper—ovals and rectangles—highlighted where picture frames once hung. Not long ago, every descendant of Francis and Viola Turner smiled from the front room’s walls. Four generations, nearly one hundred faces. Some afro’d, some Jheri curled, some bald, more balding. Mortarboards, nurses’ scrubs, swelling bellies, and wedding tulle. A depression in the floorboards opposite the front door marked the spot where Viola’s armchair had stood. Lelah had spent whole afternoons on the floor in front of that chair, watching the comings and goings of Yarrow Street as her mother or an older sister greased her scalp and combed her hair. The memory made her feel safe for a moment, like maybe she’d made the right choice coming back here.

A knock at the door.

“Little Lee-Lee, is that you?” A muffled voice from outside.

A bald, spotted head and a pair of bifocals crowded the front door’s high window. Mr. McNair. Too late for Lelah to duck out of sight. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, undid the lock.

The door creaked open, and Lelah’s eyes focused on a pair of withered kneecaps. They looked like baked potatoes. The old man’s face loomed above her. He balanced on an upturned plastic crate, one veined arm pressed against the porch’s ceiling.

“Mr. McNair, come on down before you hurt yourself.”

Lelah gave him her hand, put her free one on his elbow.

“I only fell the first time,” he said. “Sure did hurt though.”

“See, that’s one time too many. What were you doing, casing this place for a robbery?”

“Hell, don’t look like there’s much left to take.”

They chuckled. He straightened his baggy shorts, carried the crate to a far corner of the porch.

“Your brother Cha-Cha asked me to come by here and look after the porch and yard,” Mr. McNair said. He ran a hand along the porch’s rail to steady himself. “So I come every once in a while, sweep up, make sure it looks all right.”

Norman McNair and Lelah’s father had worked in the same trucking unit at Chrysler for thirty-two years. When Francis Turner died in ’90, McNair took up the handiwork for his best friend’s widow. McNair pretended to be a serious old man, but his fondness for going around with his gnarled, reedy legs showing as soon as the weather warmed up suggested a secret whimsy to Lelah. Francis Turner had never worn shorts.

“Few weeks ago somebody was sittin in Mrs. Bowlden’s living room when she came back from New Orleans,” Mr. McNair said. “A junkie. Up in there like he paid rent, just livin the life of Riley. Eatin her food and makin long-distance calls. He come up through the basement window.”

He whistled through his teeth and shook his head.

“So I got the idea to start lookin in at your house through that top window in the door, seeing as how the curtains is always closed.”

“Looks like we had the same idea,” Lelah said. “I just came by to do a quick walk-through on my way to work. Everything looks all right.”

Mr. McNair considered this, nodded. Lelah’s phone rang—no doubt it was Brianne. She pushed Ignore.

“Well make sure you lock up real tight, cause these junkies are about ready to thaw out from the winter. Lord knows what they’ll be lookin to steal.”

The old man peered down the block, brows gathered. Lelah’s car was parked across the street from where they stood, and she could see the odds and ends of her life cramming up the windows. If Mr. McNair noticed the things on the walk over, he was too polite, or bewildered, to bring it up.

“Alright, I’d best be gettin on my way,” he said. “Tell your mama McNair says hello.”

A rash of dandelions pocked the east side with yellow. The newly arrived spring—the spots of color, the surprise of birdsong—gave the neighborhood a tumbledown, romantic quality. It reassured Lelah that the ghetto could still hold beauty, and that streets with this much new life could still have good in them. On both sides of the Turner house, vacant lots were stippled with new grass. Soon ragweed, wood sorrel and violets would surround the crumbling foundations, the houses long burned and rained away. The Turner house, originally three lots into the block, had become a corner house in recent years, its slight mint and brick frame the most reliable landmark on the street.

Lelah took Van Dyke out of the east side to 8 Mile Road, 8 Mile to Woodward Avenue and into the city of Ferndale. She considered Ferndale, with its coffee shops and pet stores, a decent place for her daughter to live alone with a baby. It was home to a sizable gay community, and the trim, muscled white boys who jogged through the nearby park posed a stark contrast to the folks she’d seen on the street on her drive over. She pulled into Brianne’s apartment parking lot at 8:45.

“Gigi!” Lelah’s grandson, Bobbie, reached his chubby arms out to her.

Brianne passed Bobbie to Lelah. “What happened to you yesterday? I called a bunch of times.”

“Sorry,” Lelah said.

“I had to ask Olga across the hall to watch him again. She’s too old to have him all day like that.”

“I got my days mixed up. I thought you were off yesterday, and then working today.”

Brianne shook her head. “I can get a real babysitter, you know.”

Lelah said nothing to this. She made to bite Bobbie’s cheek, chomping down on the air next to his face. The baby grinned, showing off two bottom teeth.

Brianne was darker than Lelah, shorter too, but with the same heavy chest. She’d inherited her slim hips from her father, not Lelah, who possessed what folks liked to call “hips for days.” Brianne reached up and smoothed her mother’s hair back. The gesture was motherly, their roles reversed. Lelah flinched before she could stop herself.

“You musta woke up late. Didn’t even do your hair. There’s some gel under the sink in the bathroom if you want.”

Brianne handed Lelah a diaper bag and turned to put her key in the car door. Her nurse’s scrubs were a deep red with small black triangles printed in a haphazard pattern throughout.

“I can’t believe you go to work in that,” Lelah said. “You look like a ninja.”

“My scrubs? What’s wrong with my scrubs?” Brianne turned back around, searched her shirt and pants for a tear or a stain.

“Nothing, they’re just tacky. Nobody wants their nurse to look like they’re headed to the club.”

“Says the woman with the winter leather on.” Brianne pulled at Lelah’s coat collar. “You know it’s supposed to be seventy-five today? I’m hot just looking at you.”

“Wasn’t hot yesterday,” Lelah said. She shifted Bobbie’s weight on her hip while Brianne put on lipstick, the same deep red as her uniform. Lelah could picture old men at the nursing home where Brianne worked planning their days around her daughter. Watching daytime TV in desperation, waiting for the moment she’d come and put her small hands on their frail bodies and make their senses jolt awake.

“Anyway,” Lelah said. “When you get your RN, I’ma buy some new scrubs for you. LPNs might be able to dress like that, but real nurses wear bright colors. Care Bears and seashells. Or maybe just a nice mint green like they used to wear back in the day.”

Brianne scrunched up her lips.

“Real nurses? So now I’m a fake nurse?” Brianne said. She sucked air through her teeth. “Why are you going in on me, Mommy? You’re the one who didn’t show up yesterday.”