In the Night of Memory by Linda LeGarde Grover

Author:Linda LeGarde Grover [Grover, Linda LeGarde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000 Fiction / Literary
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2018-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

She was there in the ladies’ room, the light coming in from the window she faced bright yet diffused to a glow by the white of the nylon curtains, so that she was to us a hazy figure in blue dancing with her back to us. Her shawl, pinned to her shoulders and wrists, spread as she parted the curtains and opened the window, the breeze blowing the fringe from her shawl and her smoky exhalation back towards us as we watched, riveted and breathless. She bent, leaning out the window and calling to someone outside.

My heart pounded and I couldn’t speak. Loretta. I was certain that I would recognize her anywhere, but would she recognize us? She dipped, rose, leaned on her elbows as she spoke through the window to a shadow that moved across the sunlit white curtains, oblivious to Rain and me as we went to the bathroom, flushed the toilets, washed our hands. Was she a ghost?

We took the little jars of lip gloss from our jeans pockets and applied the pink goo to our carefully pooched-out lips, all the time watching the ghost behind our shoulders in the mirror, who waved her hands towards the open window; the semi-sheer curtains stirred in the moving air, rippling the shadow; a male ghost voice returned her murmur. She laughed; the shadow silenced and vanished.

I cleared my throat. “Hi,” I said. She jumped slightly and turned, not Loretta at all but a girl my age, taller than Rain but shorter than me, dressed in a blue satin powwow dress with a matching shawl. Her shiny slicked-back hair was parted straight down the center of her head and plaited into two skinny braids the length and shape of chocolate licorice Twizzlers, bound at her ears with beaded hair ties shaped like deep pink roses. The wide belt around her waist matched the hair ties, as did the beaded vamps on her new-looking white moccasins. She took a last drag on her cigarette and parted the curtains, exhaling the fogginess of the end of her smoke out the open window. She raised one eyebrow, licked her thumb and forefinger, and pinched the butt, then with an overhand toss pitched it out the window, a good shot.

It was only then that she looked at us directly and coolly. “Hi,” she said back in a gravelly voice. “Are you looking for a place to change? The dressing room is on the other side of the building, the Sunday school nursery room. Nobody will care if you change in here, though.”

“No . . .” Suddenly I wished for nothing more than a satin dance outfit with a beaded belt and matching hair ties and moccasins.

“We’re here with our cousin, Junior Gallette,” said Rain.

The girl stared, her narrow eyes widening, taking in Rain’s and my new hairdos and outfits. And stared some more. “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “I like your hair,” she said. “Both of you.”

Out in the hallway several boys were horsing around at a drinking fountain, shoving and knocking into each other and the wall.

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