Fallout

And I can’t help wondering if we’ve even been down here for three days yet.

34

Once a week, Janet came to clean our house and babysit Sparky and me so that our parents could go out. She’d sleep on a cot in the laundry room and go home in the morning with a Negro man who drove a dented green car with a cracked windshield. Sometimes when Sparky and I left for school in the morning, the car would be parked in front of our house and the man would be inside it, waiting.

One afternoon back in September, I was playing with my plastic army men on the white shag carpet when Mom called, “Get in the car, kids. We’re driving Janet home.”

“She’s not staying over?” Sparky asked.

“No, your father and I aren’t going out tonight.”

Mom and Janet got in the front, and Sparky and I sat in the back.

“You’ll have to tell me how to get there,” Mom said as we backed out of the driveway.

“I’m not exactly sure, Mrs. Porter. Elmore does the driving.”

“Oh, I know,” Mom said. “I’m that way when Richard drives.”

It sounded strange when Mom referred to Dad by his first name. She seemed to know where to go for a while, but then we got to a corner and she stopped and glanced at Janet.

“I think it’s a right turn, Mrs. Porter.”

It was starting to feel like an adventure. At the next light, Mom asked, “Does this look familiar?”

Janet looked out the window and pulled her lips in. “’Fraid not, Mrs. Porter.”

“I wonder if we missed a turn,” Mom said. The light changed, and we had to start going again. At an Esso gas station at the next corner, Mom pulled in. “I’ll be right back.”

While she was in the office, a man in dark-green coveralls strolled past our car. His hands were almost black with grime and grease. When he stopped and squinted at us, Janet looked down. The man took a dirty rag out of his back pocket and wiped his hands. “Everything okay?” he asked me.

I nodded. The man glanced at Janet again and then walked toward a car waiting for gas.

Mom came out of the office and got into the car. “It’s a little farther.” She started to drive.

“A man asked if everything was okay,” Sparky said from the back.

“Why?”

“I think because of Janet.”

Janet stared down at her lap again.

“I’m sorry,” Mom said.

“It’s not your fault, Mrs. Porter.”

I wasn’t sure if Mom was sorry that Sparky had said it or sorry that the man had asked in the first place.

“Oh, there! There!” Janet suddenly got excited and pointed. “That’s the street!”

Mom turned so quickly that the tires screeched, and we all slid to the right. “Aha!” She let out a gasping laugh that sounded like half relief and half surprise that the car didn’t wind up on the sidewalk. Lining the street were small brick houses with white shutters. The houses were so close together that there was barely room for a driveway between them. The small yards had low metal fences and gates. In our neighborhood one lawn blended into the next, and no one had a fence. Some Negro boys around my age were playing baseball in the street, and inside a gated yard, some girls were playing teatime with dolls around a small table. The boys eyed us warily as we passed. When my friends and I played on the street, we rarely looked to see who was in the cars that went by.

“There.” Janet pointed to the right. “The one with the sunflowers.”

Mom pulled to the curb. Parked in the driveway was the dented green car with the cracked windshield. The hood was raised, and tools were scattered on the ground. Tall yellow sunflowers lined the yard. A tricycle lay on the grass.

Janet gathered her things. “Thank you so much for driving me home, Mrs. Porter.”

“It was no bother, Janet.” Mom looked at the flowers. “How pretty.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Porter,” Janet said as she got out. “Elmore loves to roast the seeds, but he better pick them quick before the birds get ’em.”

The kids in the street were still watching us. It was hard to imagine how they could play when the balls must have constantly rolled under the parked cars that lined the curb.

Then I noticed that two small faces had come to a window in Janet’s house. It felt like High Noon when the bad men rode into town and everyone peeked from behind curtains.

Mom started back the way we came. When we passed the Esso station, the man in the dark green coveralls was pumping gas.

“Why did he ask if everything was okay?” Sparky said.

I expected Mom to say she didn’t know, but instead she said, “That’s just the way some people are, Edward.”

“They don’t like Negroes sitting in the same car as white people?” I asked.

Mom nodded.

“I thought that was only in the South,” I said.

“I think there’s a little bit of it everywhere.”

35

Dad tries the radio again: nothing.

“Could it mean the Russians won?” Ronnie asks.

“Nobody won,” mutters Mr. Shaw. “We destroyed them, and they destroyed us.”

“Maybe not,” Dad says. “Maybe Kennedy ordered our side not to retaliate.”

“What are you talking about?” asks Mr. McGovern.

“There’s no sense in destroying everything,” says Dad.

Paula’s father laughs contemptuously. “Ridiculous. He’d never let the Russians win.”