Free The Turner House by Angela Flournoy Page A

place. Francis thought she might be a whore, and this place some type of cathouse. Still, he took off his cap.
    â€œYou a soldier?”
    â€œNo ma’am. I just come up from Arkansas,” he said. “You only rentin to soldiers?”
    â€œI didn’t say that,” she said. She looked him over again. “You just look like a soldier, the way you stand. Not much the way you dress, though.”
    Francis made a conscious effort not to adjust his posture. He repeated that he’d just come from Arkansas, added that he didn’t have much money, but if she had space for him, he’d never miss rent. The woman’s eyes dropped to his mouth as he talked, and Francis wondered if this was because he sounded so country or because she saw something there she liked, or didn’t like. He had a gap between his two front teeth, and people were often of two minds about it.
    The woman suggested he split a room to save his money. He’d get the room to sleep at night, and during the day a Mr. Jenkins, who worked nights, would have it. She would hold his belongings downstairs.
    â€œYou’re lookin at me strange, but this here’s the best setup for a fellow like you.” She swept one arm in front of her like a circus ringleader presenting to a crowd. “You all keep coming up on every train and bus, and y’all find work, sure enough. But it’ll be
a lot
harder to find yourself a decent place to live. You wait and see.”
    Francis didn’t believe her. He’d read about the race riots up here the year before. He’d read that on top of rumors of a black baby thrown into the river or some other specific injustice, the fighting had been over housing, and that the government had finally broken down and guaranteed space for Negroes in the city. Housing projects, they were called. He kept these thoughts to himself. Part of the job of being the mistress of a crumbling boardinghouse was to present housing as scarce, he supposed. He had no doubt he’d find a better place to live once he found work, so he left his bag with her. She introduced herself as Miss Odella Withers after he’d paid his rent for the week. He wandered over to Beaubien Street, back toward the heart of the Negro commerce stretch that he did not yet know doubled as the center of Negro nightlife. He passed over a place that two conked-haired men in suits entered and followed a man with rolled-up shirtsleeves and well-worn trousers into another. He sat at the bar and ordered a scotch, the only liquor he’d ever seen Reverend Tufts drink.
    Viola was expecting a call. Francis imagined her sitting in Jean Manroy’s ramshackle house far down the road from her own, trying to be polite so that Jean didn’t change her mind about lending the phone. He’d said he would call when he was settled, but who could consider half a room and no job settled? Francis looked around the Up North bar and drank his scotch like the other patrons—slowly, carefully, as if it had been on his mind all day.

Two South
    SUMMER 1944

    The Reverend Charles Tufts left a message for Viola with her neighbor Jean Manroy. He said that his pastor friend Up North had not heard from Francis, and furthermore that it was not advisable for Viola to contact him about it again, seeing as how her husband was now in the business of turning his nose up at favors. Jean relayed this message with a nasally, phony-white accent meant to mimic the reverend’s intonations. It was a known secret that the reverend who claimed New York was originally from North Carolina and had trussed up his diction upon setting foot in town. Viola did not laugh. She left Jean standing barefoot in her raggedy front yard and walked back to her parents’ house to check on Cha-Cha.
    Six weeks had passed since Francis left town on a bus bound for the train station in Little Rock, and local tongues wagged. Eventually the ones in Viola’s own house joined