Brenda got out quickly and headed toward her. I stepped out just as they hugged and kissed. Then they both turned to me.
"Wait until you see my discovery. April," Celia said, turning to me. "You're going to have your own little place. There's a studio behind the house, and it has a bed in it. There's no shower or bath, but there's a bathroom, and you can just use the house shower and bath, of course. The important thing is it will be your place, your own little place."
I squinted skeptically. A studio with no bathtub or shower. What was it?
"I've already fixed the bed for you. I've been busy as a worker bee," she declared. "I bought us all new bedding, towels, linens, everything to start. I even stocked the kitchen! Let me show April the studio."
"Let's start unpacking first," Brenda said. "No sense wasting a trip."
It seemed to me she didn't even look at the house. We could have checked into a garage, and it would have been the same thing. Where we were now didn't matter. All that mattered was we were somewhere else.
"Ave, aye. General," Celia said, saluting and winking at me.
We returned to the car and began to carry cartons and bags into the house.
I had to be grateful there was a studio apartment. I thought.
The living room was a quarter the size of ours, and the kitchen was not much bigger than that as well. There wasn't a separate dining room, just a portion of the living room utilized as such. All of the furniture looked as if it had fallen off a truck on its way to a garbage dump. I could see the springs had popped out under the long dark blue sofa. It looked as if it had been there from the day the house was built and not moved an inch in any direction since. Whoever had set the living room up had designed the furnishing around an old television set. Celia immediately announced that it didn't work and we'd have to replace it.
The one nice aspect of the small house was its flooring, all a dark oak hardwood that was well crafted and of such good quality that time only made it look richer. There were a few area rugs scattered about. The kitchen sink had large yellow stains around the drain, and the faucet had a leak. There was a fourburner gas stove and a small refrigerator that sounded a minute or two away from heart failure. The Formica counters were a faded yellow, as were the walls in both the living room and the kitchen. An antique toaster was set under one of the two windows in the kitchen, both with drab white curtains hanging listlessly around them.
The cabinets were open and showed where Celia had installed new shelving paper and neatly arranged what dishware there was with the house. She had also stocked one of the cabinets with staple items.
What was the main bedroom was the biggest room in the house, nearly the size of my bedroom back home. Whoever had lived here before must have directed all his or her attention to it, because it had newer, better-quality curtains framing the two large windows at the sides of the large headboard. The bed itself was a four-post canopy. There was a vanity table on the right with a good-size oval mirror in a mahogany frame. Besides the two nightstands, the furnishing included a built-in armoire and another dresser that matched the canopy bed frame. There was only one closet.
The second bedroom of the house was half the size, if that, and now used as some sort of storage area where the owner had put some broken furniture, a hammock frame, and a folding table. There was no bed. Down from it and just before the back door was the bathroom. Instead of tile, it had cracked gray linoleum. The white walls were in desperate need of washing. There was no stall shower, and the tub needed a shower curtain. I wondered how the two of them would arrange their toiletries in such a small cabinet with two short shelves beneath. There was only one window in the bathroom, and it had no curtain, just a shade.
If this was the house. I wondered what the studio apartment looked like. Celia opened the back door and told me to follow her across the small backyard to the shack behind the house. The door of it stuck, so she had to pull it hard to get it open.
"We'll fix that," she told me. She reached in to turn on a light and entered.
I followed, looking back to see if Brenda was coming, but she was already returning to the car to get another carton. The studio apartment was just one room with a pull-out sofa she had fixed with new linens, pillow cases and a blanket, a desk, and a chair. The bathroom wasn't much bigger than the bathroom on a commercial jet. It had a cracked mirror above the small sink.
"I know it doesn't look like much,' Celia said. "but just think how you can fix it up. You can do anything you like to it." she added, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask. Does that include setting it on fire?
Her voice was full of cheerfulness and excitement in an attempt to compensate for the dreary lodging.
"The important thing is it's your private area. and I know how much that matters to a teenager. It was always important to me when I was your age," she continued. "I know it's not what you're used to, but we'll make this into something. You'll see."
"It's
all right," I said. If I hadn't, she would have gone on and on about it. I set down my carton of personal things. "We'd better get back to the car and help Brenda."
"Right. After we get everything into the house, we'll freshen up and go to this great restaurant just a few blocks away, the Memphis Belle. The waiters and waitresses all wear these quaint old-fashioned costumes, and the place is decorated like the dining room of some antebellum plantation house. You'll have so much fun exploring this area of Memphis, and I'm sure it won't be long before you've made new friends."
"Let's help Brenda," I said in response, and walked out.
It wasn't necessary to go through the house to get to the front. I went along the south side of the house where the grass was spotty and around to the driveway. Brenda was already back at the car for another load from the U-Haul. I just pitched in behind her. She glanced at me.
"It's only temporary," she said. "After the school year. we'll find something better."
I shrugged, which I knew annoyed her. She put the carton down and turned to me.
"You've got to stop that indifference. April. When something bothers you, declare it, state it, take a position. Start letting people know you exist. Don't be afraid of annoying or angering people. You have a right to your opinion."
"Okay," I said, my eyes narrowing to squeeze the tears that were pouring into them. "I hate it here. I want to go home. I want Daddy to be alive and the way he was when he loved us. and I want Mama singing in the morning and all of us laughing at the breakfast table."
Celia came up behind me. I could feel her there. but I didn't turn.