new suitcases in the mornin’.” She returned her attention to me and gave me a big smile, though there were still tears in her eyes.
“OK, Muh’Dear.” I smiled and gave her a bear hug.
I packed everything I wanted to take the Sunday night before my departure date, almost four months after my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t really have a plan as far as my future was concerned. I figured a few months or maybe a year or two in a place where I didn’t know anybody would give me the time I needed to get a grip. Besides, turning tricks, even for the short time I had, had worn me out. I felt dirty and cheap. Even though it was all behind me, I still took two baths a day, gargled frequently, and douched before going to bed every night.
Muh’Dear arrived home unexpectedly in a cab from Judge Lawson’s house around 5 P.M. “Why are you home so early? I haven’t even put dinner on yet,” I said.
For once she didn’t look tired after working most of the day. She gave me one of her biggest smiles and gripped my shoulders. “’Cause I want to send you off with a bang. Get your coat. The cab’s waitin’. We got a reservation at Antonosanti’s.”
Muh’Dear and I didn’t talk much during the cab ride. In fact, I sat up front with the driver on purpose, hoping I could carry on a conversation with him instead. Muh’Dear asked me over and over if I had packed my Bible, my good dress, toothbrush, things like that. In addition to those items, I had also packed things that I would never use again, particularly clothes I’d outgrown, but that reminded me of special events I’d shared with Rhoda. Things Rhoda had given to me, like some stiletto heels her Aunt Lola had given to her that she didn’t want. I had worn the shoes only once, to the prom. I had also packed my prom dress, which I had not had cleaned on purpose. I would never wear it again, so the stain made by Lena Cundiff’s punch didn’t matter. I left it stained because I never wanted to forget what she did to me and what I did to her.
After we entered the restaurant, Mr. Nelson was the first person I spotted, sitting at the bar. He had an unlit cigar in one hand and a shot glass full of whatever he was drinking in the other. Sitting next to him was Mr. Antonosanti. He was smoking his cigar, and there was a full shot glass in his hand, too. I would have gone over to speak to them if Uncle Johnny had not appeared, staggering from a side entrance near the men’s room. Antonosanti’s was the nicest restaurant in Richland, but it was too expensive for average people. It was a large, dimly lit place with live plants leaping out from big vases on the floor. On the walls were paintings of Roman soldiers in uniforms hugging thick-bodied women. Music, women wailing in Italian, filled the main dining area.
The place was crowded with well-dressed white patrons stretching their necks and shading their eyes with their hands to look at me and Muh’Dear as we strutted proudly across the floor. I was glad Muh’Dear requested a booth near the back for privacy. “Let us try to stroll into a place like this in Florida. Them white folks would set the dogs on us so fast,” Muh’Dear said under her breath.
The only thing I felt a little uneasy about was the fact that we were so casually dressed. Under my trench coat I had on blue jeans and a gray smock. Muh’Dear had on her black-and-white maid’s uniform. We didn’t check our coats at the front. We didn’t remove them and place them on the other side of the booth until we had ordered. “Add a bottle of your best champagne,” Muh’Dear told the waiter. The friendly young man hesitated, then looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “Don’t worry, she’s twenty-one. You can ask your boss, Mr. Antonosanti…good friend of my boss, Judge Lawson,” Muh’Dear told him, speaking out of the side of her mouth. The waiter nodded and winked before he left. “They better not give me no stuff in here. I’ll sic Judge Lawson on ’em and make ’em lose their liquor license. Straighten your collar, girl.”
I straightened my collar and brushed off my dingy smock. “I guess we could have dressed