The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [113]
“Is that a Ralph Lauren?”
“Lady, I’m not colored, I’m black. Well, I’m a quarter black, at the most. See, my mama’s daddy was white and so was my daddy. So that’d make me a quarter black and three-quarters white.” She smiled at the woman. “Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were related! And no, ma’am, that’s not Ralph Lauren, that’s a chair.”
“That’s a Ralph Lauren.”
Pajamae shrugged. “Whatever.”
“The price is six hundred fifty, but I only have hundred-dollar bills,” the lady said. “Do you have change?”
“No, ma’am, sure don’t.”
“But I want this chair!”
“So does that man over there.”
The woman turned. “What man?”
“Bald dude in the blue shorts, with the big belly, talking to the fat woman in the striped shirt? He said he was bringing his wife over to look at it.”
In fact, Pajamae had not spoken to the man.
“Don’t you let him have this chair!”
“Ma’am, first rule of yard sales is, cash rules.”
The woman again studied the chair, then the bald dude, then the chair. Finally she said, as Pajamae knew she would say, “I’ll pay seven hundred.”
Pajamae removed her Sharpie from behind her ear and wrote as she spoke: “Sold to Miz…”
“Smythe, with a y and an e. S-M-Y-T-H-E.”
“Pay the man.”
“I live just down the street. Can you deliver?”
“No, ma’am, but Louis can carry.”
Pajamae waved at Louis standing off to the side like he was trying to go unnoticed, as if a six-foot-six, 330-pound black man in Highland Park could blend in. When he arrived, she said, “Louis, this nice lady needs this chair carried to her house.”
Louis leaned down, spread his arms, grabbed the sides of the big chair, and lifted it without effort. He began walking toward Mr. Fenney like he was carrying a sack of groceries.
The lady said, “Do I have to tip him?”
“No, ma’am,” Pajamae said, “just don’t make him mad.”
Mrs. Smythe with a y and an e looked at Louis’s broad back walking away with her chair, frowned, and said, “I’ll tip him. Twenty. No, fifty.” She followed Louis over to Mr. Fenney.
Pajamae shook her head: White people wouldn’t last a day down in the projects. When Boo walked up, Pajamae said, “Mama would love this.”
“What?”
“Rich white people at a yard sale.”
“Do you shop at yard sales often?”
“Yard sales are our shopping malls.”
“Do you get good stuff?”
“Nothing like this. Course, we don’t look for designer labels. We just make sure the clothes don’t have blood stains, and no one’s thrown up on the furniture.”
Just then a woman wearing big sunglasses walked over holding out a handbag. “Is this a knockoff?” she asked.
Boo gave her a look. “Ma’am, my mother would rather have died than be seen with a knockoff. That’s a Louis Vuitton original, retails for seven-fifty. We’re offering that bag for two-fifty. My mother never even took it out of the house.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Pay the man.”
The woman left and Pajamae said, “Your mama has some fine stuff.”
Boo nodded. “Mother always said, any girl says money can’t buy happiness just doesn’t know where to shop. But I guess she was wrong.”
Boo pulled a black party dress off a rack. “A thousand dollars. She wore it one time to a party at the club.” She replaced the dress and picked up a red spike-heeled shoe. “Three hundred dollars.”
“For shoes?”
“Dior.”
“Dee who?”
“Christian Dior. Women kill for these shoes.”
Pajamae took the shoe and examined it. “My mama could wear these to work.”
Scott had moved Rebecca’s entire closet down to the backyard, hundreds of dresses and shoes and pants and shirts and garments of every kind and color. He had never once ventured into her huge walk-in closet so he had never realized just how many clothes she owned. He wondered now how much they had cost. Scott smiled as he accepted money from another customer buying his wife’s clothes.
Pajamae was holding up a powder blue fringed miniskirt.
Boo said, “That was Mother’s Cattle Barons’ Ball outfit.”
“Wearing this, she’d fit right in with Mama and Kiki working Harry Hines.”
Pajamae replaced the skirt and picked