Page 33 of Tempting Eden

Jesus.“I’m sorry.”

Another shrug. “I’d already been through four other foster homes by the time I’d gotten to them. I was fourteen. You couldn’t tell me anything. A little whipping never really hurt me. I was used to having it rough. Being half-black, half-white made it so that I didn’t really fit. Girls fell for the blue eyes, and boys wanted to beat the hell out of the white half of me.”

“That would never have occurred to me. You’re just so…” I took another swig of wine. What the hell. I’d already laid my cards on the table that night at the beach. “You’re just so fucking handsome. And still dark. But, I mean, not super dark, but dark.”

He smiled at me, really smiled, and my heart sort of fell all over itself, drunk.

He pointed to his eyes. “Can’t get past these. And my skin passes the paper bag test.”

I set my cup down. “The what test?”

“I don’t know where it came from. I read about it while I was in… Well, Ms. Temple gave me a book about race and identity, and it was in there. People used to keep blacks and mulattos out of certain establishments if their skin wasn’t light enough. The litmus test was a brown paper bag. If you were light enough and could pass, like me, they let you in. If not…” He shrugged. “It may be just a myth. I don’t really know. The idea of it sort of stuck with me, though.”

I blinked, not knowing how to process the idea of a paper bag being used to judge someone as worthy or unworthy. “I don’t even know what to say to that. I mean, I know people can be awful. But to hear you talk about it takes me somewhere entirely new.”

“Empathy’s a bitch, right?”

“No kidding.” I smiled at the easy way he defused any awkward moments, like he went out of his way to put me at ease. “Wait, you got me off course. You were saying about you being a tough kid?”

I was trying to joke with him, but his face turned serious again.Fail.

“Like I said, there were whippings and such. I never let them whip Helen. Never. Mama Reed would decide that Helen wasn’t minding or wasn’t doing right, and she’d try and give her a whipping. Helen would find me and jump in my lap or hide behind me. I’d take her lashes instead. My skin was thick by that time. I mean, I was a bad kid, really. I ran the streets, stayed out late, did whatever the hell I felt like doing.”

He pointed the index finger that was wrapped around his cup at me. “I was the one all you rich white people in the suburbs feared. I let my anger rule me. I was mad at the world, mad at my parents for choosing the pipe instead of me, mad at living in the projects, mad that the sun rose in the East. You name it, I was mad about it. Understand?”

I didn’t. Not really, but I nodded. I needed him to continue, to tell me what his life was like. I hoped it got better. I hoped it had a happy ending. Something—maybe my own experience—told me that things were never that easy, no matter what side of the city you came from.

“Helen, though, she was different. She had a spark. There was something in her. Something I can’t really describe. Have you ever met someone you just knew was special? Sort of effervescent, I guess would be the word?”

I looked at him hard. The kitchen had fallen away as his words poured out. It was just Jack and me—and his past, floating around us like a ghost. “I certainly have.”

“She was just that. I can still see her. About this high.” He held his hand out to demonstrate. “She always kept her hair in these thick braids with barrettes at the ends. Little plastic ones in all different colors. I’d find them in my tiny bed sometimes, jammed up against my spine or stabbing me in the leg.” There was that dazzling smile again.

“One day, she’d heard from one of our foster brothers—none of us were really related, not even Helen and me—that I’d gotten into a fight the day before with one of the other project boys. She sat me down on the curb outside our house.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t really a house. It was just a dull brick apartment, stuck together with a bunch of other equally sad ones. Anyway, she sat me down and gave me her serious face.”

I’d seen them only from a distance, the dilapidated projects out along the interstates near the industrial areas or the airport. I’d never gotten close enough to see the people who lived in them. I sort of hoped no one did.

Jack paused and took a deeper breath, as if trying to calm himself. “Helen told me that if I kept on, if I didn’t change my ways, I would end up just like my parents, or worse. Can you imagine? A little pipsqueak telling me, a teenage boy, my business. She didn’t give up. She told me how we were going to get out of Lowood. How we were going to live together in college. I laughed at her. I was never going to college. She persisted. She told me I would major in some sort of business, and she would major in books because she liked to read. She painted this beautiful picture for me with her words, you know?” He swiped at his eyes lightly and then laughed. “She even said we would give each other away when we got married.”

“She seems like a very thorough little girl.” I smiled with him, his joy in her memory warming me right along with him.

“Oh, she was, she was. Your Adele reminds me of her. Helen was hopeful. Free. She saw the best in people. Even in me.”

His smile faded, his happy memory ebbing. I realized he’d only referred to Helen in the past tense. I reached across the table, an almost involuntary movement, and he took my hand. “What happened to her?”

He shook his head, as if willing the tears away, or maybe trying to avoid the tide of grief that I could already hear drowning his recollection. It didn’t work, as a drop slid slowly down his cheek. I wanted to reach out and wipe it away, right along with his pain. “She-she was killed. Her body was found in a ditch not half a mile from our apartment. She was half-naked. She’d been…”

“Oh, God, Jack, I’m so sorry.” Tears welled in my eyes. But this wasn’t time for my grief. This was his. I could tell he carried it with him, locked inside his now sorrowful eyes.

His voice hardened. “The cops came, but they didn’t really care about some gutter rat from Lowood who got killed. One less for them to worry about.”

He gripped my hand harder. “I didn’t let it go. I couldn’t think of anything else but what had happened to her. About making whoever did it, pay. I went kind of crazy then. I had just turned fifteen. I was big for my age. I talked to everyone, beat whoever I had to—basically did the cops’ job for them. I ran on rage. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. It took some time, but I found out who did it.”

“What did you do?” My voice was small, barely a whisper.

He met my eyes. “I sent him to hell.” The hardness in his voice echoed in the tight line of his jaw, the tension in his body.

My hand flew to my face, covering my mouth. I could feel my cheeks going cold, the blood draining as I immediately sobered. “God, Jack.”

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