“You always been above yourself,” he snarled. “Runnin’ off to join the women’s army during the war, comin’ back wit’ a college-boy soldier, then runnin’ away from Loosiana to California, like y’all was too good to stay home.”

  Mae didn’t speak. She also didn’t heave one of the kettles of hot grease and chicken at him, which is what she wanted to do. “I can’t give you my recipe,” is what she said, not looking at him, and still figuring out how she could throw hot grease at him without burning herself.

  “You gon’ bring me that recipe t’morra, you smart-mouth nigger bitch, or I’m gon’ kill you and your college boy, you hear me? And you know how you better answer me!”

  When he was mad all the cracker Cajun poured from Dave’s mouth faster than he could speak the words, and only somebody from Louisiana who’d grown up listening to the patois could understand it. Mae kept her back to him, kept turning the chicken. She’d be damned and burning in hell before she ever uttered the words Yessir, Mr. Dave. She was preparing for the hot-grease shower they’d both take when Melvin Gibson saved them.

  He burst into the kitchen and stopped short. “Where the hell is everybody? I got a line out front waitin’ to order! How many chickens is cookin’ and when they gon’ be ready?”

  Paying customers. Money. The only things that could grab Dave’s attention. “I sent Delilah and Sarah home early and Mae’s finishin’ these last five. They almost ready. Come on, Melvin, let’s go sell ’em ’fore the people change they minds.”

  Dave pushed past Melvin and out the swinging door: White man in front, colored man bringing up the rear. Melvin shot Mae a worried look, then followed. Mae ladled all the chicken out of the skillets, not caring whether it was fully cooked. She wouldn’t be in the kitchen when Dave returned, and she knew he’d take his time enjoying the fact that he was the only white man with a business on this part of Central Avenue in the Black part of Los Angeles, and that he sold the best fried chicken. All the help were colored, as were all the customers, but there were no tables and chairs for them to sit and eat the best fried chicken on this part of Central Avenue.

  Mae folded her apron and put it on the shelf in the storage closet, grabbed her purse, and was about to flee when she noticed Dave’s money box sitting open on the shelf. She hesitated only briefly before scooping it up, piling the three folded aprons in its place, and running into the alley, going the wrong way so she wouldn’t have to pass in front of the Chicken Coop—that’s what Dave called the place.

  She walked four blocks out of her way before she could catch a bus that would take her home. She stopped in a liquor store and got a big paper bag so she didn’t look so awkward carrying the money box—the heavy money box.

  Samuel heard her coming up the stairs and met her, taking the big bag, and he was about to hug her until he took a close look at her face. He pulled her into their rented room and quickly closed the door. “What’s the matter, Mae?”

  She sighed deeply and they stood in the middle of the floor squeezing each other for a long moment. Finally Mae spoke: “Dave Hebert, the bastard.”

  He held her at arm’s length. “What happened, Mae? You call him a bastard and quit?”

  “Worse than that, Samuel.”

  His eyes widened. “Did you hit him with something, knock him out?” Then his expression changed. “Did he do something to you, Mae? Did he put his hands on you?”

  “No, Samuel. No, I promise you.”

  “What then, Mae? What could you do that’s so bad you had to run?”

  “I stole his money, Samuel. All of it.”

  He looked confused so Mae pointed to the liquor store bag, which heightened his confusion. He released her and opened the bag that he’d placed on the dining table. He lifted the metal box, then opened it.

  “Great God Almighty! How much money is in here, Mae?”

  “I don’t know how much but it’s all he’s got. He don’t trust banks.”

  Samuel looked all around the room, as if he expected Dave Hebert to materialize. He rushed over to the door and opened it, looked out, then slammed it shut and locked it. “Does he know where you live?”

  Mae scoffed, “He’d have to give a damn about me to know where I live, which he doesn’t, so no, he doesn’t.”

  “What about the other cooks—what’s their names?—Delilah and what’s the other one’s name?”

  “Sarah, and she knows where I live ’cause she lives on Normandie and we usually ride the bus home together—”

  “Did she see you take this box?”

  Mae was shaking her head, then quickly explained the events that led to her becoming a thief. She explained that Melvin Gibson was the only one there with Dave, and that he would leave when the last piece of chicken was sold. Dave would lock the front door and turn out the lights, then he’d come into the kitchen to add the cash from the final sales to his box. “Then he’ll tear up the kitchen looking for it even though he’ll know it’s gone—”

  “Then he’ll come looking for you. We gotta clear outta here right now, Mae.”

  “And go where, Samuel?”

  “I don’t know, but pack your things—NO! Leave all this old, wore-out stuff. I’ll take my work boots and clothes and you just take your personal things—”

  “I got to wash the grease stink off me first, Samuel, and outta my hair. I can’t go nowhere smellin’ like this.”

  “All right, but hurry up, Mae!”

  She ran into the tiny bathroom that wasn’t really a bathroom but just a corner of a room with pipes from the floor below delivering water with barely any pressure. Maybe wherever they were going would have a real bathroom.

  Samuel had changed into his one nice suit of clothes and shined shoes when she came out of the shower, and he had her one nice dress laid out on the bed, along with the underwear, stockings, and shoes she wore with the dress. She brought their deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and shampoo from the bathroom and Samuel tossed it all into a plastic bag, which he put into their one suitcase, where he’d packed his work clothes and boots, and hurried to the door with it. Mae had never dressed so quickly.

  “We look like we’re going someplace special, Samuel,” she said, a bit of excitement creeping into her voice to join the dread.

  “Maybe we are, Mae, but for sure it’s the first time we went somewhere with more than eight or nine dollars in our pockets.”

  “I never stole nothin’ before, Samuel.” That admission killed all the excitement.

  “Me neither.” His head dropped and his big shoulders slumped and they stood at the door, Samuel’s hand on the knob.

  “I don’t think he knows where to find us, but if he finds us, he will kill us. He won’t even think about it.”

  Samuel turned the knob and opened the door, then quickly closed it and hurried to the bed with the suitcase. “Gimme your purse, Mae,” he said, and he stuffed it full of money from Dave Hebert’s cashbox. “No matter what, don’t open this purse,” he said as he snapped it shut. Then he put some bills in his wallet, folded some and put them in his pants pocket, closed the suitcase, and took them back to the door. This time they left. It was still light out, and still warm, though the cool air was coming in from the ocean. Samuel put the suitcase into the trunk of their beat-up ’55 Ford Fairlane and covered it with blankets and put a toolbox on top. Then they got in the car and drove. Mae didn’t ask where they were going and Samuel didn’t say. They were both the kind of people who could get lost in their own thoughts, people who didn’t mind quiet, in fact preferring it over idle chatter and random noise.

  Mae watched the street signs as they drove and knew enough to understand that they were driving west, away from Central Avenue, but she wasn’t sure where exactly they were. Then Samuel turned off the busy, wide street and onto streets lined with small, pretty houses, and there were colored people in all the yards and on all the porches. Samuel stopped in front of one of them. There were no people outside the house that needed painting and the yard with raggedy grass and wilted flowers. Mae looked the question at her husband.

  “Fella I work with lives here, Gus Jackson. Him and his wife both from Texas.”

  Mae frowned. “I never heard you mention him.”

  “That’s ’cause I don’t much like him, and you won’t neither. He talks too much, outtalks everybody and knows everything. Loud and wrong is Gus. He’s a fool is what he is.”

  “Then why are we here, Samuel?”

  “They got an apartment up over the garage that till a couple of weeks ago some family was living in, and Gus couldn’t stop talkin’ about how glad he was when they moved on—”

  “Maybe somebody else has moved in since then.”

  “Gus woulda said. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut about something like that.” Samuel opened the car door. “Come on, my girl.”

  Mae opened her door, got out of the car, and joined Samuel on the walk up the cracked cement walkway to the front door, which opened before they could knock.

  “I thought that was you, Sammy! What brings you to my door?”

  Gus Jackson was as big as he was loud, but he didn’t open the door any wider and he didn’t invite them in.

  “This is my wife, Mae—”

  “What y’all doin’ here, Sammy?”

  Nobody called Samuel Sammy, and Mae was waiting for her husband to say that when the mass that was Gus got shoved aside and a woman half his size took his place in the now wide-open doorway. “I’m Velma Jackson. How’re y’all this evenin’?”

  “Fine, thank you, Miss Velma,” Mae said, extending her hand. “We’re Mae and Samuel Hillaire. Samuel works at the port with Gus and we came to see if you’d rent us that apartment over top of your garage.”

  The Jacksons looked surprised, then Gus looked nasty. “Why? You get put outta where you was livin’?”

  Mae grabbed Samuel’s arm before he hit Gus. “No, we didn’t get put out but we left in a hurry ’cause I quit my job, walked out without a word ’cause I got tired of that mean, nasty cracker I worked for, and we were afraid he’d come lookin’ for me. So we just left.”

  “Come in and sit down,” Velma said.

  “What did your boss do that made you quit?” Gus demanded to know, and when she told them, he exclaimed, “That place on Central Avenue, the Chicken Coop? That’s the best fried chicken I ever ate!”

  “When did you eat it, Gus, ’cause I’ve never had any.”

  The man really was a fool! He launched into some elaborate lie, taking no notice of the look Velma was giving him, when she cut him off, explaining that the place above the garage was in no shape to be rented because Gus’s cousins all but destroyed it.

  “That ain’t no way to talk about my people, Velma.”

  “But it was all right for you to ask Mae and Samuel if they got put out from where they lived? And your people did tear it up. But I might know ’bout a place—”

  “What place?” Gus was snarling now.

  Velma, ignoring him, told them about a place on Normandie, around the corner from the beauty parlor where she worked: two stores, side by side, were just closed by the owners who’d lived upstairs and recently moved to someplace called the Inland Empire.

  “Try not to talk to the husband. He don’t like colored people and don’t mind lettin’ you know, but the wife—her name is Elaine—she’s all right. At least she’s better than him.”

  Mae and Samuel stood up and headed for the front door. “Thank you so much, Miss Velma,” Mae said.

  “Yes, ma’am, we really appreciate you taking the time to help us,” Samuel said, shaking her hand.

  “We’ll be sure to let you know where we end up, and we’ll have you to dinner when we get settled somewhere.”

  Velma hugged Mae. “Will you cook that fried chicken?”

  They easily found the side-by-side stores Velma told them about. Samuel pulled up to the curb and parked behind a Ford station wagon that a woman was loading with boxes piled on the sidewalk. She saw them and began speaking before they were all the way out of the car.

  “We’re closed,” she called out without looking at them.

  “We know,” Mae said. “Miss Velma told us.”

  The woman stopped loading the station wagon and peered at them. “Velma from the beauty parlor?”

  Mae nodded. “You must be Elaine. We’re Mae and Samuel Hillaire and Velma thought your upstairs apartment might be for rent.”

  “She’s such a nice person. Always thinking of someone else.” Elaine wiped her hands on her pants and took a step toward them. “We have some people who want to buy the stores, and if they do, they want that apartment. But please tell Velma I appreciate her thinking of us.”

  “We’ll tell her,” Mae said, and began to follow Samuel back to the car, when Elaine announced, “I might know someone with a house to rent a few blocks away.”

  Mae and Samuel were at her side so fast she took a step backward, fear in her eyes.

  “We’re not here to hurt you, Elaine,” Mae said. “I thought you knew that.”

  Elaine hung her head for a brief moment, then gave them furtive glances. “Would y’all mind goin’ to sit in your car while I head inside to call Jimmy Miller and tell him you might want to rent his house?”

  Mae and Samuel quickly returned to the Ford while Elaine just as quickly entered the first of the two buildings. “People might get the wrong idea they see us standing outside,” Samuel said sourly.

  “I think it’s her husband she’s worried about,” Mae said. “She don’t want him seeing her talking to us.”

  Samuel didn’t have time to reply before the woman was back. She thrust a piece of paper at Mae. “Jimmy Miller is at his house waitin’ on you. I wish y’all good luck,” and then she was back to loading boxes into the back of the Country Squire with such intensity that it almost felt as if she’d never paused to talk to them at all. She didn’t look their way and when Samuel pulled away from the curb, the Hillaires didn’t look back at her.

  They pulled up in front of Jimmy Miller’s house moments later. It was eight blocks away on 39th, a quiet street lined on both sides with small, neat houses, very much like Gus and Velma Jackson’s 54th Street. Samuel was about to park when a lanky, almost bald white man came out of the house and gestured for them to pull into the driveway. They did and got out of the car, figuring it was safe to do so.

  “Elaine told me y’all was on the way,” the man said, and Samuel shook the hand that was offered. “I’m Jimmy Miller.”

  “We’re Mae and Samuel Hillaire. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Miller, and we appreciate you seeing us.”

  “I just hope y’all like my house. Come on inside and take a look.”

  Mae and Samuel looked at each other, then at Jimmy Miller, or at his back because his long legs already had him up the walkway, onto the porch, and at the front door, which he swung open, then stood aside to let them go in first. Three steps in, they knew they wanted to live in this house. It was practically empty and it was spotless—the walls gleamed white and the hardwood floor shone. They could see straight through to the kitchen where there was a stove and refrigerator, and in a room beyond that, a table and two chairs.

  “We already know we want to rent your house, Mr. Miller, but what do you want to know about us?” Samuel asked.

  “You were in the war, weren’t you, son?”

  “We both were,” Samuel said, and Miller’s eyes got wide. He turned them on Mae.

  “You were in the Women’s Army Corps?”

  “Yes sir, I was.”

  “Where did you serve and what did you do?”

  “In France. I was a mechanic first, then an ambulance driver.”

  “And where did you serve, Mr. Hillaire?”

  “In the Pacific.”

  Jimmy Miller closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. “We saw some things, didn’t we, Mr. Hillaire?”

  “Yes sir, we did,” Samuel replied, and briefly closed his own eyes. When he opened them Jimmy Miller was smiling. A real smile, not one of the phony ones. He told them how much the rent was and they gave him three months’ worth on the spot. He promised to return in a couple of days with the lease. “I hope y’all like livin’ in this house as much as I did,” and he gave them a ring of keys, “’specially you, Miss Mae, ’cause my Mildred never did like it. Never did like California. She left, and now I got to go too, back to Mississippi.” He looked as miserable as Mae would if she had to return to Louisiana.

  Mae clutched the keys until her hand hurt and didn’t release them while Samuel drove to a store on Vermont where they purchased enough of what they’d need to spend a first night in their new home. They didn’t talk because they couldn’t. Would Jimmy Miller play a cruel joke on them? Were they both in the same dream?

  They hurried back to the place they now called home, locked and bolted the doors, went into the big bathroom, got into the tub, and counted Dave Hebert’s money. Mae began shaking her head almost immediately. “No way on God’s green earth he earned all this money. You know that Louisiana Fish Market down the other end of Central? His family owns it and they fired him ’cause he didn’t come to work half the time and he was drunk when he did go.”

  “Then where’d he get almost five thousand dollars, Mae?”

  “Gambling or stealing,” she answered, and Samuel knew she was right, and they both felt a bit less guilty for taking this money. Not good about taking it, just less guilty.

  “We should open our own business, Mae.”

  “Say what, Samuel?”

  “A café. Where you’ll fry up the best chicken in town and I’ll make the best red beans and rice.”

  The new menu at Mae’s Family Dining was a big hit, especially the vegetable plate and the new vegetable selections to accompany the new meat selections: baked and fried chicken and fish, beef and pork ribs, beef and turkey meatloaf, fried and smothered pork chops. Once a week, offerings of lasagna, beef, and pork ribs always sold out. So did the daily favorites macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and sweet potato casserole and soufflé, and the red beans and rice. Gone from the menu were liver and onions and oxtails. Three complaints about the discontinued items and dozens of compliments on the new menu, and the dessert menu drew nothing but praise: chocolate, coconut, and lemon layer cake, apple and peach cobbler, and nut brownies.