Wherein we meet Jada R. Jackson, and we discover the cost of living in Republican Westchester, as well as the state of her union
Jada looked at her watch, realized it was too dark in the car to see the dial, and checked the clock on the dash. Damn! It was half past eight already. The kids would have eaten and—if she was lucky—be settled down to bed and homework. Her eyes flicked away from the dash but not before she noticed, with a start, that the gas gauge was almost on empty. Damn it! Now, when she was so late, she’d have to take the time to stop and fill up. Why was it that Clinton, who was unemployed and had the whole day to get errands done, had used her car yesterday but not bothered to fill it up?
She burned with indignation. She knew why. Clinton’s mind was on things other than her convenience.
Jada pulled into the island at the Shell station, turned off the ignition, and waited for full—or, for that matter, even partial—service. She’d had to learn from experience that her time was more valuable than money, but if they kept her waiting here for this long at the pump, what was the point of paying more? She beeped and reluctantly an older man came out of the glass enclosure to help her. “Fill it up” was all she told him and, to speed the process along, she flipped him her Shell card at the same time before she rolled up the window to keep out the October chill. The card slipped from the geezer’s fingers and she watched as it skittered across the oily macadam; he had to squat to pick it up. She sighed and turned up the heat setting, not that it would do any good with the motor off.
Jada shivered, and the movement was reflected in the rearview mirror. Her eyes looked very bright in the darkness. Her lips were chapped and there were already patches of dry skin under her eyes—a sign of winter. Jada sighed. Only in her early thirties, she was still a striking woman, but as she glanced into the rearview to check again on the attendant she wondered how much longer her looks would last in the harshness of these winters.
The old coot had finally picked up her card and gotten to the nozzle, but now seemed to be fumbling with the Volvo’s gas cap. Jesus H. Christ! It was what she called the RTSYD syndrome: Rush and They Slow You Down. She’d experienced it at the bank. Why was it that, when you were in a hurry, morons were invariably at their slowest?
Jada jerked opened the door, got out of the car, and moved to the back fender. In a single motion she threw back the gas cap, took the nozzle from the old man’s filthy hand, and inserted it into the gas tank opening herself.
He probably wasn’t grateful for her help, but she was paying three cents a gallon more for full service and she’d had to do it herself. Jada felt that was the story of her life—she had to do everything herself—and she was ready to burst into tears.
Sometimes she doubted her faith. Her parents, island people, still had a deep faith. But somehow it seemed easier to believe when you lived in a warm climate. Right now, shivering in the chill of a New York State wind, she wondered if her God loved her. God had created marriage, she figured, to see just how much two people could irritate one another. If her theory was right, she and Clinton had certainly done God’s work. The two of them were barely speaking at this point, and she was pained to realize that not speaking was an improvement in their relationship right now. Of course, they’d have to speak tonight. She’d have to force this issue that had come up between them.
Jada climbed back into the Volvo. The old man, after too long a pause, came back with her card and receipt. Shivering, she rolled down the window to take the little tray he held out in his greasy hand so she could sign. She grabbed it, scribbled her name, and tore off her copy, thrusting the tray back at him.
But instead of taking it and pulling back, the old man merely leaned forward. “Pretty car,” he said in a conversational voice. As if she needed to talk to him! Get a grip. It was almost eight-thirty! But he continued. “And a real pretty woman in it,” he said. She was about to say thank you and roll up the window when he added, “Pretty damn uppity.” She hit the window button, closing him off as best she could. Then, as if she couldn’t predict, didn’t know the next word that would come out of his mouth, the “N” word did, followed by his spit on the side of the car.
The stupid bigoted cracker! Jada gunned the motor and pulled out of the station and onto the Post Road without even checking the left lane. She cut off a tanker truck and was rewarded with a deafening hoot from the diesel’s whistle. Tears of rage rose in her eyes, and she almost missed the left turn she had to make on Weston.
In the darkness and comparative quiet of that winding road, she tried to calm herself. To be fair, the incident with the disgusting, ignorant old man was her fault: she knew that constant vigilance and never-failing politeness were the price she and Clinton paid—along with high property and school taxes—for living in this part of Westchester County. Being black in wealthy white suburbia wasn’t as hard as it had once been, but it still wasn’t easy. They were not the Huxtables. Despite everything she did, they were barely keeping their heads above the financial water line. But they were giving the children the kind of life that all Americans dreamed of. Still, there was a very real cost involved.
They lived under constant financial pressure. And they were cut off from their church, back in Yonkers. There were no black families in their neighborhood, and few kids of color at the school. Shavonne’s friends were white, and Kevon spent all his free time with Frankie next door. Sometimes Jada worried that they weren’t just fair-skinned, but also fair-weather friends. Even she had become best friends with her (white) neighbor Michelle and sometimes, though she loved Mich, she felt … well, alone. Worst of all, though, was Clinton’s alienation.
Sometimes Jada wasn’t sure if all the struggle was worth it. When Clinton had first begun as a carpenter, he and Jada had lived in Yonkers and rented a two-room apartment. Then he’d gotten a job that changed everything. A wealthy executive in Armonk noticed Clinton’s work on a commercial project in White Plains and hired him to convert a three-car garage into a guest house. Clinton had learned the ins and outs of contracting right on the job. He didn’t make a dime of profit on that first one, but he had used it as a springboard to other jobs. The boom times, and perhaps a little white liberal guilt, had gotten Clinton work at least as often as it had stood in his way.
But he was equipment crazy. He spent all the profits on a backhoe, a bucket loader, and a bulldozer. He had T-shirts made up that said, JACKSON CONSTRUCTION AND EXCAVATION, IF WE AIN’T BUILDIN’ WE’RE DOZIN’. Well, he was probably dozing right now—on the sofa. Because he had mismanaged everything.
At first they’d both thought Clinton’s touch had been golden. Both she and Clinton had been sure he would create their fortune. In the darkness, Jada shook her head. Maybe he’d gotten a little cocky, a little arrogant even. He felt like he was different than most of the other men back at their church. “They’re employees,” he used to say. “I’m an employer.” He didn’t go as far as turning Republican, but he did buy a set of golf clubs. And she had had total faith in him.
It was funny. When she’d seen Clinton working on a building site or directing his men, she’d gotten off on it. He was DDG—drop-dead gorgeous. He seemed so “take charge,” so full of authority. Now he was just full of it.
Blind faith, as it turned out. They didn’t know they were merely riding the fiscal tide of the times. When corporate downsizing began, all of Clinton’s business dried up and blew away, just the way so many white executives’ jobs and minds had. He couldn’t make payments on the equipment, couldn’t make salaries, had to let people go. The trickle-down effect took a little longer, but Clinton’s mind and pride were eventually blown, too. For almost four years he tried to hang on, giving detailed estimate after detailed estimate on houses that were never built, extensions that were never added.
Finally, all his pride, her faith, and their money were gone, but their mortgage payments still had to be paid. Jada begged Clinton to get a job, and when he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, she—who hadn’t worked since their first child was born—got the only job she could—as a teller for minimum wage. Even for that she had needed the help of her friend Michelle to get the position. There were a lot of job-hungry wives in Westchester. The money Jada had earned just barely covered groceries, but at least from that day on they were paying cash for their Cap’n Crunch instead of Mastercarding it.
Clinton, though, hadn’t been relieved. In fact, he’d been made even more miserable by her working. He moped and loafed and slept and ate and griped. He said he didn’t like her out of the home, that the job paid too little and was beneath her. She agreed, but knew they were in no position to negotiate. Somehow, Clinton just never accepted that. He lived a bitter, private life, waiting for “the climate to turn.” He’d gained at least forty pounds. He yelled at the kids and seemed to blame her for everything.
If it had been impossible to cope at home, Jada had found it surprisingly easy to persevere at work. The bank was a relief: what they expected of her was so much more doable than her task at home. To her own surprise, she’d been promoted almost immediately to head teller—a black woman with three other black women and a white girl reporting to her! She’d never supervised anyone but her children. Then, when she’d been made a loan officer, and later head of the whole loan department, she’d been as astonished as any of them. Mr. Feeney, the branch manager, had liked her—they got on real well and up to his retirement, she’d been his assistant branch manager. When he’d retired, well, she’d hadn’t been surprised at anything except her reluctance to tell Clinton the good news.
Only one woman, Mr. Feeney’s old secretary, Anne, seemed to resent her. Now she was branch manager, with two dozen people, including Anne and Michelle, reporting to her! She coped with Anne and depended on Michelle. Thank God it hadn’t changed their friendship: Michelle wasn’t the least bit jealous. Michelle liked being a loan officer and didn’t want to put in any hours after three o’clock. Not, of course, that Jada wanted to—she just had to. The bank was paying her about half what they had paid Mr. Feeney, but they still wanted blood. Two months ago they’d sent some management consultants through to see if there was some way they could “reduce overhead through more efficient paperwork flow-through and staff utilization.” What it really meant was finding a way to fire a couple more people, though Jada’s branch had larger deposits and transactions than any other branch of its size in the county.
Of course, everyone had been shaken up. They all needed their paychecks—except for maybe Michelle—as bad as Jada did. Sometimes Jada had to shake her head at the way men managed things. They gave lip service to the idea that human resources (never “people”) would perform better if their morale was high, but then the sons-of-bitches were always doing things that lowered morale.
The report had come back two weeks ago and—thank the Lord—the branch had been given what television movie critics might have called a big thumbs up. But Jada had been left with frightened, resentful employees. To combat that she instituted a weekly meeting to get and implement the staff’s suggestions for improvements. The problem was, there were very few real ways to improve, while everybody wanted to use the meeting to showboat. Well, at least the men did. They all had to repeat old ideas over and over as if they were new and their own. The women had to talk every single damn thing to death.
This evening’s meeting had been so stupid, a waste of time. Why was it that a person alone could make a decision in ten minutes, but an organization of ten people could take two hours to come to no decisions at all?
Jada sighed as she turned the Volvo into the driveway. She could see the unweeded dahlia bed by the streetlight. Her mother, a great gardener, would be ashamed. At the very last minute she saw Kevon’s bike lying on the blacktop near the garage door. She swerved and braked. God-double-damn it! Goddamn, Goddamn, Goddamn! So much for not taking the Lord’s name in vain. Jada stormed out of the car into the cold, jerked the bike up, and leaned it against the side of the garage. She opened the door (Why hadn’t Clinton fixed the automatic door opener? The man was useless as handles on a glove!) and then put the bike away, pulled the car into the garage, got out, closed the garage door, and stamped across the lawn.
It was bedlam inside. Clinton was lying on the great room sofa. He gave her a look that said “I do help around the house,” when all he’d managed to do in the last week was put a towel in the hamper once. Now he was talking on the phone while Shavonne was eating cookies and watching TV. Both were forbidden to her preteen daughter before homework and a chapter of reading. Meanwhile Kevon, Jada realized with a shock, wasn’t anywhere to be found. At least the baby was sleeping, unless Clinton had left her lying in the driveway, too.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked Shavonne.
“I don’t know,” Shavonne murmured, without taking her eyes off the screen. “Are we going to eat soon?”
“You haven’t had dinner yet?” Jada shot a murderous look at Clinton and went to the refrigerator. She took out the milk, grabbed a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, took out the last can of tuna, and decided to add the leftover string beans. There were plenty of’em—why did she bother with green vegetables at all?
In nineteen minutes the table was cleared and set, the television off, Shavonne washed, Kevon was found in his room, and the casserole was being dished out to the four of them. Life took on order and she could see even Clinton was marginally grateful. That sense of order, and the children, were the only reasons he hung around. But his lapses were getting worse and worse. She would have to talk to him.
Jada looked across the table at her husband. He averted his eyes. His skin gleamed and his hair, in a new cut, was in a handsome fade. For a month this new crisis had been hanging over her head. She should talk to him tonight. Confront him. But she was so tired. I’m the real casualty in this family, Jada thought. She knew that, despite her incredible fatigue tonight, she still had to put Shavonne and Kevon to bed, check in on Sherrilee, as well as confront her husband and demand his decision, a decision he didn’t want to make and she didn’t want to hear.
Jada began to spoon what was left of the casserole into a plastic refrigerator bowl. The limp, twice-cooked green beans—certainly a misnomer, because they were no longer anything even close to green—lay there before her. They looked worse than dead—used up and wasted.
Somehow the sight of them made her inexpressibly sad.