Ella Fitzgerald’s sweating hands were icy, and perspiration kept breaking out on her forehead. She tried to dab at the sweat with a handkerchief, smearing her makeup, which left brown streaks on the white linen.
艾拉·菲茨杰拉德汗流浃背的双手结冰，额头上不停地冒汗。她试图用手帕擦拭汗水，涂抹她的化妆品，在白色亚麻布上留下棕色条纹。

She felt her throat constricting, and now she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to open her mouth to sing.
她感到喉咙紧缩，现在她害怕自己无法张开嘴唱歌。

She’d agreed to appear on Toast of the Town, a brand-new show hosted by an awkward young man named Edward Sullivan, on a tiny moving picture screen called “television.”
她同意出现在一个名叫爱德华·沙利文（Edward Sullivan）的笨拙年轻人主持的全新节目《小镇吐司》（Toast of the Town）上，在一个叫做“电视”的微型电影屏幕上。

She’d never done anything like this before.
她以前从未做过这样的事情。

It was a time of hope and possibility. None of them—neither Ella, nor Ed, nor television itself—had grown into what they would soon become. They all had a sense that something more, something bigger, was on the horizon, and they just had to figure out how to reach it.
那是一个充满希望和可能性的时代。他们中没有一个——无论是艾拉、艾德，还是电视本身——都没有成长为他们即将成为的样子。他们都有一种感觉，更多的东西，更大的东西，即将到来，他们只需要弄清楚如何到达它。

But it was also a time of terror.
但这也是一个恐怖的时期。

Ella would be performing in front of an all-white audience, and it would be live.
艾拉将在全白人观众面前表演，而且是现场直播。

“But you always sing for a live audience,” her manager, Norman Granz, reminded her, but this time was different. This wasn’t just a stage show or a club where she could read her audience and connect with them—throw her head back, snap her fingers, and bop—see the audience swaying in their seats or dancing in the aisles.
“但你总是为现场观众唱歌，”她的经纪人诺曼·格兰兹（Norman Granz）提醒她，但这次不同。这不仅仅是一场舞台表演或俱乐部，在那里她可以读懂观众并与他们建立联系——向后仰头、打响指和嘘声——看到观众在座位上摇摆或在过道上跳舞。

Today she’d be performing in a studio, staged and static, and she would become a moving picture that would appear on thousands of television sets all across America; and once it was done and broadcast over the airways, it could never be undone.
今天，她将在演播室里表演，舞台和静态，她将成为一幅动态画面，出现在美国成千上万的电视机上;一旦完成并通过气道广播，就永远无法撤消。

Perhaps this audience wouldn’t like the way she looked or sounded. She remembered what happened with Jackie Robinson. He’d broken the “color line” playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers and he and his family had been cursed and shoved at the games. Would this happen to her? She would be mortified. She would sink through the floorboards. She prayed there would be just one colored person out there in the dark. Then she could just focus on him. People often talked about the racism in the South but she knew all too well that there was a Jim Crow North that wanted nothing to do with the likes of her.
也许这些观众不会喜欢她的外表或声音。她想起了杰基·罗宾逊（Jackie Robinson）的遭遇。他在布鲁克林道奇队（Brooklyn Dodgers）打球时打破了“肤色线”，他和他的家人在比赛中被诅咒和推搡。这会发生在她身上吗？她会感到羞愧。她会从地板上沉下去。她祈祷在黑暗中只有一个有色人种。然后她就可以把注意力集中在他身上了。人们经常谈论南方的种族主义，但她非常清楚，有一个吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）北方不想与她这样的人有任何关系。

“Stop worrying,” Norman kept telling her. She didn’t know where he was now. Maybe he’d gone to get coffee or maybe to the bathroom. Right now she was all alone. There’d been a technician in the room a moment before, and the makeup woman who had turned up with makeup too light for her, but they were gone now. “It’s going to be great. You’ll see,” Norman had said. But that’s how he was, always an optimist. And even though he championed Negro artists, he was still white. He couldn’t understand.
“别担心，”诺曼不停地告诉她。她不知道他现在在哪里。也许他去喝咖啡了，或者去了洗手间。现在她孤身一人。刚才房间里有个技师，还有那个化妆的女人，她化了妆，对她来说太淡了，但现在他们已经走了。“这将是伟大的。你会看到的，“诺曼说。但他就是这样，总是一个乐观主义者。尽管他支持黑人艺术家，但他仍然是白人。他无法理解。

She smoothed her dress, bought yesterday, black satin from Saks Fifth Avenue.
她抚平了昨天从萨克斯第五大道买来的黑色缎子裙子。

She nearly fainted when she saw a slight smear of makeup on the fabric. She brushed at it with her handkerchief, and luckily it disappeared. This was a beautiful designer dress, tailored for her just that morning; and she had pearls around her neck and crystal earrings dangling from her ears. She’d made it to the big time. She had nothing to be afraid of. This was what she’d wanted all her life—to be treated like she was worthy of the best and to feel like she deserved it. This was what her mother had dreamed of for her. Oh Mama, she thought, I sure wish you could see your little girl now.
当她看到布料上有轻微的化妆品时，她几乎晕倒了。她用手帕擦了擦它，幸运的是它消失了。这是一件漂亮的名牌连衣裙，是那天早上为她量身定做的;她的脖子上挂着珍珠，耳朵上挂着水晶耳环。她已经成功了。她没有什么可害怕的。这是她一生想要的——被当作她配得上最好的对待，并觉得她应得的。这是她母亲梦寐以求的。噢，媽媽，她想，我真希望你現在能看到你的小女孩。

She’d gone into Saks and just inside the door she’d been stopped by the doorman and asked if she knew where she was. But Norman had made it right and she was wearing that dress right now. She swung her head to feel the earrings touch the sides of her neck.
她走进了萨克斯，刚进门就被门卫拦住了，问她是否知道她在哪里。但诺曼做对了，她现在穿着那件衣服。她转过头，感觉到耳环碰到了她脖子的两侧。

Thinking about her mother made her also think about last night, lying on the pristine white sheets of the Waldorf Astoria. “I’m going to put you up in the Presidential Suite,” Norman had said. “You’re a princess. You deserve this. You deserve all the best things in life.” The suite had been enormous, the French provincial furniture daunting and luxurious, but the memory that stuck with Ella now—the memory that circled around her like an agitated bird—was the smell of those bedsheets, fresh and full of sunshine. How had the hotel made sheets smell like sunshine? Ella had washed enough sheets, and she’d never heard of this before.
想到她的母亲，她也想起了昨晚，躺在华尔道夫酒店洁白的床单上。“我要把你放在总统套房里，”诺曼说。“你是公主。这是你应得的。你值得拥有生活中所有最美好的东西。套房很大，法国的省级家具令人生畏而豪华，但现在留在艾拉身上的记忆——像一只激动的小鸟一样在她周围盘旋的记忆——是那些床单的味道，新鲜而充满阳光。酒店是如何让床单闻起来像阳光的？艾拉已经洗够了床单，她以前从未听说过这个。

She wished she could tell her mother.

But she couldn’t.

Instead she sat on a surprisingly hard vinyl chair in the greenroom of Toast of the Town, about to be broadcast live into thousands of homes, mostly white, and she could hear Ed Sullivan talking to the crowd, and her mother would know nothing of this.

Then Norman came back, self-assured and handsome, with his lantern jaw and impossible grin. And white. And carrying a teacup for her. She hadn’t even asked, but he’d known anyway that she’d want it. “Here ya go, sweetheart,” he said, and she thanked him, took the cup gratefully. Black tea with lemon. She began warming up her voice, sipping on the tea.

“You’re gonna be great,” he was saying, and then saying other things but she wasn’t listening. She wished she’d had her nails done. The crowd wouldn’t notice. But they would notice if she was frightened or nervous or vulnerable.

The past years of touring had taught her how to just stare above the heads of the crowd if she doubted herself. And she was going to look for that one colored person if she got scared.

The crowd roared a response to something Ed Sullivan said, and her throat closed up. She knew she’d forget the words. She knew the white people would laugh at her. “This ain’t nothing,” she told herself, thinking back, as she often did, to her very first performance, years ago now, at the Apollo Theater. “If you can survive contrary colored folks, you can do anything.” She shook her head. “Now go head on. You been through a lot worse than this, girl.”

This was true. She had been through a lot worse.

But, right then, it was as if she could draw a line, plot a chart, connect the misery from those terrible days after what happened to her mother right through those terrible years before the Apollo. The path would lead her here, to this moment. To this high cliff she now stood upon.

She would have to take the next step, march off the cliff’s edge, and hope that the clouds below would be enough to hold her up.

Or perhaps they wouldn’t.

Ella was in the living room when her mother Tempie got home. Connee Boswell’s “Concentratin’ (on You)” was blaring from the phonograph, the melody effervescent, making Ella’s fingers twitch even before she’d started dancing. Ella was showing her sister Frannie a fun Charleston step when her mother hauled in two stuffed gray laundry sacks, their ends bunched tight with twine.

“You two have a good day?” her mother asked, rubbing where the string had bitten into her palms. Frannie vaulted to the doorway to give their mother a hug, and Tempie bent over her for a moment, rubbing Frannie’s back.

Ella, always more reserved, hung back. “It was okay,” she said.

“Just okay?”

Ella shrugged. “Yeah. Just okay.” She was swaying to the music. She couldn’t get enough of music; she wanted to devour it. She loved the boneless feeling the bass gave her, how she could lose herself, physically, inside it. Sometimes she didn’t even realize she was tapping her feet or hands to the rhythm, or rocking slightly, side to side, in time with the beat.

“I’m not raising you girls right. When you see your mama come in the door, you stop dancing and come and help her.” Tempie gestured at Ella. “Turn off that music and take these bags.”

Ella turned off the phonograph and dragged the laundry sacks across the floor toward the kitchen.

“Pick those up. Don’t let them drag,” Tempie said.

Ella lifted them only slightly, straining under the weight.

“Did either of you start dinner?” Tempie often asked this, but neither Ella nor Frannie were good cooks. Both girls shook their heads.

Ella dropped the bags by the fire escape. Her mother was opening the icebox, pulling out potatoes, ham hocks, and collard greens. Ella edged around her, heading back to the phonograph.

“You can help me make dinner,” Tempie said.

Ella glared at her. “Can we just finish the record?”

“Connee Boswell won’t put food on this table.”

“But you love listening to Connee Boswell.” Nothing could be that wrong in the world, Ella felt, as long as they had music and dancing.

“Frannie, go in your room. I need to talk with your sister.”

Frannie pouted and stomped off.

“And close the door,” Tempie called after her. Then to Ella, “Come in here and sit down so we can talk proper.”

She stood at the sink washing potatoes, then put them in a bowl, and sat down at the table with a knife to peel them. Her shoulders slumped; the edge of the kitchen table bit into her forearms as she leaned over the bowl. The light from the fire escape gleamed off the back of her head, and she suddenly seemed older, more exhausted than Ella remembered. But then she straightened, pointed for Ella to sit across from her, handed her a peeling knife. “I want to look you dead in the eyes. I will only say this once, and I don’t want no back lip.”

Ella sat down, her toes still keeping time to the big band swing in her head. Charles would love this step. She moved her hips from side to side in the chair.

“Stop that damn wiggling.” Tempie passed her a potato. Her mother often sounded harried and put-upon, always exhausted, so Ella was used to this tone, used to “serious talks.” You need to help out more around the house. You need to mind Frannie for me. Ella did her best, but she also wanted to dance—she was good at it. Sometimes she only felt alive when she was buried in the music, her whole body pulsing with the bass and the trumpets and the lyrics.

“You act like you don’t understand how hard it is to put food on the table,” her mother said.

“I help,” Ella said, knife digging into her potato. After all, she gave her mother the seventy-five cents she earned weekly with Charles.

“I know you do,” Tempie said. She put one damp hand over Ella’s. A potato peel curled on her wrist. “But we need steady money. They’re raising the rent again and things are gonna get worse.”

“What’s Joe doing?”

“You mean your father? He does what he can.” But she didn’t meet Ella’s eyes. Joe Da Silva, her mother’s husband, performed odd jobs around the neighborhood, acting as a part-time chauffeur in the winter and digging ditches in the summer. Other times he swept up and cleaned in a local welding shop, or in other local businesses, but his work was irregular. Ella didn’t know where he went when he didn’t work, but today he wasn’t home.

Later, Ella wondered if her mother had been embarrassed—both for herself and for Joe. Tempie never admitted it, but she’d been the provider all along.

Tempie said, “We need to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. You need to help out more.”

“I can dance more,” she said. “I could maybe go on Thursdays, too. And both weekend nights.”

“You’re not going to dance for a while. You’re going to work with me.”

“I—” Ella started, but her mother talked over her.

“I got you a steady job for after school and on the weekends. This is a good opportunity for you. I had to talk to a lot of people and call in favors to make it happen.”

“But—”

“I need you to do this,” Tempie said, forcing Ella to meet her eyes. “It means regular weekly money. More than you can make dancing.” Tempie sat back a moment. “I have always supported you and your dreams of dancing, but you need to have something else going for you. Get some skills you can use if all that shuffling don’t work out.”

Ella found herself on her feet, eyes stinging. The potato sat brown and half-peeled in her bowl. “Me and Charles just entered the Lindy Hop contest over at the Troubadour. We paid for it. Twenty-five cents each. If we win, I’ll make us money. A lot of money.”

“It won’t be enough, and we can’t count on it. Sit down.” Tempie gestured with her knife to the seat. “I told you I didn’t want no back lip. You act like a wild pig running up and down this house every time I ask you to do something.”

“But you promised me that I could dance!” For years, ever since she was small, her mother would whisper to her, “You can be anything you want to be. You want to be a dancer? Then dance. The world can be what you make of it.” Now a life of scrubbing laundry like her mother unfolded before Ella, and that was no life she wanted to live.

“I know, baby,” her mother said. She’d peeled five potatoes to Ella’s one. “It’s just that things have gone from bad to worse this time. You need to help.”

Ella didn’t understand. She could make much more money dancing than she could scrubbing some white man’s undershorts. And what was Joe doing anyway? Shouldn’t he be earning the money? “You promised,” she said, and her voice came out as a shriek. “You promised I could dance! What about all your promises about ‘never quitting’?”

Last year Tempie had given Ella a poem that she’d copied in red ink on a piece of lined paper. “Keep Going,” it was titled, and it ended with the line, “You mustn’t quit.”

“Sometimes things ain’t so easy,” Tempie said. “I’m not saying you won’t dance no more. Just that right now I need you to bring in steady money. Steadier money than your dancing can bring in.”

“But I have to keep learning new steps!” Ella said. “There’s always new steps and the good dancers know all of them! If I don’t keep dancing I’ll get behind and never catch up! Never!”

“Sit down,” her mother said, slapping the flat of her hand on the table. “No back talk. Folks being put out they homes. Fighting in the streets for jobs. I need you to help your mama. I fought to get this job for you. Don’t let me down. Please.”

If only. Later, forever after, her mother’s words would ring in her memory. That “please” would echo in her memory, and take on a gravity like another sun, pulling the tides loose from their shores. But right then, Ella twisted her face and huffed, “I ain’t taking no job in the laundry. I’m gonna dance.”

“You gonna help your mama.” Tempie’s words were precise, clipped, thin as the potato peels. “From now on you will go to school and after school you will work in the laundry with me. We have to survive. We can’t rely on soup lines. There ain’t nobody but us.” She rubbed her eyes, weary. So weary, Ella would think later. All these signs, all these portents, and Ella didn’t have the eyes to see.

Her mother sighed. “You’re my pride and joy, Ella. Please do this for me.”

But Ella couldn’t hear her words. “I won’t,” she said again.

This woman, darker than most other mothers, had embarrassed her at school when she’d appeared outside her classroom dressed like help, carrying an umbrella for Ella because it was pouring outside. This woman had told her to dance for a better life, had promised that Ella wouldn’t have to live like a domestic, a maid, a laundress, had filled Ella’s head with dreams that she could rise above the squalor in Yonkers, had bought her music and a phonograph, had beamed when Ella had danced, had applauded when Ella sang.

All of it was a lie.

“I ain’t gonna be like you,” Ella screamed. “I ain’t gonna do laundry for a living! That ain’t gonna be me!”

“So you raising your voice now.” Tempie pulled out her leather belt, bunched it in two. “Your Aunt Virginia told me I was going too easy on you. She was right. You need to think about someone other than yourself.”

Ella backed away toward the living room.

“Where you going?” Tempie stood, too, dropping the potato and the knife with a clang in the bowl. “Get over here.”

“You’re just a—” Ella struggled to find a word—“just a—a nobody. Working in white women’s basements. Cleaning their clothes. I want—”

In a movement swifter than Ella had anticipated, her mother snatched her arm, holding her fast. The belt whistled through the air, and walloped loud and sharp, as Tempie lashed it hard against her legs.

At first Ella couldn’t feel the physical pain, so deep was her outrage and fury. She stared at her mother with all the hatred she could muster, willing with all her might that her stare would kill her mother right there before her eyes. The more she stood, refusing to cry, the harder her mother whipped her: three, four, five blows.

“You dare to ’spute my word.” Now Tempie swung the belt over her head, lashed Ella’s arms and back.

Ella was rigid, determined to withstand this. She had a volcano sizzling within her for what she wanted to be: a dancer, free to be anything other than what her mother was. She would not cry. She would not flinch.

Finally, Tempie put down her belt. She had tears on her cheeks, or perhaps it was sweat. She levered herself back into her chair, her fingers whitening as she gripped the edge of the table. Ella tried to imagine all the hateful things she could call her mother but instead she thought, over and over: I wish you were dead.

“This will be your last week dancing,” her mother said. “You’ll start at the laundry with me on Monday.”

Ella didn’t answer.

She didn’t look at Tempie as she marched out of the room and into the tiny bedroom she’d shared with Frannie. Didn’t speak to Frannie, either, who was staring over at her with eyes wide. Ella lay fully clothed on their bed, covered herself in the thin blanket as if to shut out the world, and shoved her rage and sorrow into a vault, a tight safe. She refused dinner, lay in bed without coming to the table or acknowledging her mother or stepfather, when he got home. When Frannie tried to speak to her, she turned her face to the wall.

She’d never forgive her mother, she vowed.

Never ever.

The next morning, from her bedroom, Ella heard her mother singing “Down Hearted Blues,” her favorite Bessie Smith tune.

Ella was late for school—her mother had woken her as usual, but Ella refused to budge even when her sister Frannie had grumbled out of their shared bed, packed up her books, and headed out for breakfast. Still Ella lay there, listening, despite herself, to her mother singing—singing!—from the kitchen.

As usual, the relentless stench of soaking laundry, acrid with grated lye, soap, and bleach, surged into the rest of the apartment. But the stink wasn’t the issue. Ella was used to that. The issue was her mother: Ella hated her, hated how she looked, hands red and face squeezed tight over those pots on the stove, hated the memory of the beating she’d taken and could still feel all over her body.

She knew her best friend Charles would be waiting for her to walk to school, and it was cold outside, so Ella finally shifted on the mattress, her back and shoulders stinging from last night’s belt. When she uncurled from the bed, her calves throbbed with each step. Gingerly Ella slid into her school clothes. Tempie’s singing rang through the apartment. It was melodic, Ella allowed. Few people heard Tempie’s voice, locked up as it was in the kitchen with the laundry and the boiled potatoes. Served her right, Ella thought. Her mother deserved to be trapped in her dead-end world. Ella wanted something better. She’d head out for school right now, without even saying good morning to her. She knew that would hurt her mother, and right now she wanted revenge.

Ella took three steps toward the door, passing the Christmas tree that was shedding a carpet of brown needles across a corner of the living room. She’d almost reached it when her mother called out, “Ella, is that you?”

She could refuse to answer, just open the door and disappear, but instead she said, “I’m gon’ be late.”

“You get in here,” her mother said. “If you got up when I called, you’d have plenty of time. You make me late.”

There was no escape. “But I’m gon’ be late—”

“Stop this nonsense. I need more lye. It’s in the bag by the back door.”

Frannie was in the living room—she’d already eaten and could easily have gotten whatever her mother needed, but no, Ella had to do it. As usual. In the meantime Frannie was making a big show of wrapping her textbooks in one of Joe’s leather book straps that he’d made during his stint working at a tannery. Frannie didn’t offer to get the lye, even though she was right there.

So Ella headed back to the tiny kitchen. The humidity smacked her as soon as she slipped through the doorway. Now her combed hair would nap up. The kitchen was little more than a bump-out extension of the living room: one wall of cabinets, with a sink and small stove on one side, and on the other a small table that barely fit the four of them.

As Ella had envisioned, her mother was bent over the washtub next to the sink, raking the sheets over the washboard. On the stove, cast-iron cauldrons of water bubbled and rattled like living things, desperate to escape.

If only. These two words would haunt Ella for years, would send her bolting from sleep, breath locked in her throat; would tap her shoulder almost companionably, and then throttle her when she turned to look. If only she’d knelt down next to her mother, dunked her hands, too, in that scorching water. Here, Mama, she could have said, Let me do it for you. You sit back now and rest a minute. There were hundreds, thousands, of words that Ella might have said that morning—that she imagined, later, she’d said. If only she’d said them. If only she’d acted differently.

Instead she said nothing, last night’s bruises burning where her blouse rubbed them. She was still so angry that she had decided to forgo breakfast, but now she could smell the richness of her mother’s just-baked cornbread hovering above the laundry smells. She reconsidered. Maybe just a small piece. She veered around the washtub and over to the back door that led to the fire escape. The container of Red Devil Lye lay on its side, some of the white powder spilling onto the laundry sack. The horned, grinning demon on the cover seemed to wink at her as she picked it up.

When she handed the lye to her mother, Tempie grimaced as she straightened, wincing with a grunt. She was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark amber skin, and a low, ringing laugh on the rare occasions that Ella heard it. Above high cheekbones, her eyes looked exhausted. A few years back her mother had gotten into a car accident, and although she seemed fine, she often said that her back ached, or her ribs, or sometimes her hips. She had trouble standing sometimes. Maybe, Ella thought, her back was troubling her today.

Despite yesterday, Ella found herself saying, “Mama, you alright?” The soap fumes, bubbling up on the stove, sucked up the air.

“Of course I’m alright,” her mother said, pressing the small of her back and then bending back over the washtub, sprinkling in the lye. “Why you ask me that? What you gon’ do if I’m not alright?”

Ella never forgot those words, but in that moment she regretted that she’d asked.

She slid over to the counter, toward the cornbread covered with a dish towel, and cut a larger piece than she’d originally intended, pulled it from the pan. It was golden, deliciously warm.

“You remember what we talked about?” her mother said. “You be back by four today.”

Her mother didn’t have to say it again, didn’t have to gouge the wound even deeper. “I know,” Ella said. She cut a second, even bigger, piece of cornbread while her mother wasn’t looking.

“I don’t want to be chasing you all over the streets tonight.”

Tonight would be one of the last nights that she and Charles would perform dance routines in local Yonkers clubs: seventy-five cents each to entertain the crowd. Ella lived for dancing, and this was good money for a fifteen-year-old. But apparently not good enough for her mother.

“Fine,” Ella said, flouncing out of the kitchen.

“Make sure you put on your winter boots and wrap up,” her mother called after her. “Put on that wooly hat your daddy bought you. Frannie, you bundled up good?”

“You know I don’t like that hat,” Ella said; and her sister, who’d been lurking by the door waiting for Ella, yelled out, “Yep, I’m wearing my gloves, too.”

“Glad one of you has sense,” Tempie said. “That’s how you catch cold. Trying to be cute with your head uncovered and your legs showing.”

“Okay,” Ella said.

“Bye, Mama,” Frannie called out. “Love you!”

“See you later,” Ella said. She grabbed her wooly hat from the wall hook and jammed it on her head. She would stuff it in her pocket as soon as she turned the street corner.

Afterward she was glad that she’d taken it, glad that she followed the last request her mother ever made of her. If only she’d said “I love you,” the way that Frannie had done. But she didn’t. Instead she closed the door behind her, never knowing if her mother answered; or what she had said if she did. Forever after, she imagined turning back into that hellish cavern of a kitchen, hugging her mother tight around the waist; imagined hearing her mother’s “Love you” float out into the winter morning like a benediction. If only.

She opened the door to the bitter January sunlight, turning briefly to look behind.

And that was her last glimpse of Tempie alive—bent over a hot wash basin, arms submerged.

Outside, the few inches of snow had melted into a dirty scum. Sure enough, Charles Gulliver was waiting for her on the sidewalk. She could tell he’d been there for a while.

Ella couldn’t tell him about the beating, about what her mother had said last night. She couldn’t bear to speak the words, as if saying them out loud would make them truer.

Frannie ran ahead, met up with her best friend Maisie. Charles chattered on about dance practice, about the Troubadour that weekend, and would they be able to practice tomorrow all day. Ella trudged silently along next to him, kicking at frozen slush balls, not wanting him to know that her dancing days were over.

Ella didn’t like math much, but was good at it, so she knew she didn’t really have to pay attention. Instead she tapped her feet beneath her desk in geometry class, imagining the routines that she and Charles would practice after school. They were focusing on the Lindy Hop’s “Chase into the Tandem.” The last time they’d performed, she’d fumbled the timing. They’d drill down the steps this afternoon at his house, until she had to be back home for dinner.

She dreaded telling Charles that he would be losing his dance partner—kept hoping that if she ignored thinking about last night, about her fate at the laundry, it would just go away.

She’d lose Charles, too. She just knew it. When Charles looked down at her, he made her feel beautiful and feminine. He was growing tall and broad-shouldered, and every once in a while would look at her a little differently: a leaning-in, a softening around his jaw, that made her feel special. She’d imagined that one day they could be a famous dance couple, in love on and off the dance floor. Now she wouldn’t even see him regularly.

Only last week he’d held her hand as they’d walked past a group of girls in the hall, and Myra Johnson had stared at her extra long, as if she hadn’t known who Ella was before then. Myra always wore her skirt a little too high and would sidle up to boys and bat her eyes in a way that Ella thought looked silly. The boys seemed to like it, though, and were always hovering around her, laughing at whatever she said. Myra, blank faced, glared at Ella as Charles held her hand and talked to her about the weekend, and Ella wasn’t paying attention to Charles, she was feeling the pressure of Myra’s stare and enjoying it immensely. It was about time Ella had a boyfriend. Charles had never tried to kiss her but maybe sometime he might try.

Now he’d be looking for a new dance partner. Myra Johnson, or Kelly Hayes. Ella thought that both girls were prettier than she was, with lighter skin and longer hair. They seemed to glide when they walked, as if on casters. Ella struggled to walk without feeling gawky.

She never felt gawky dancing in Charles’s arms, though. When she was dancing, she felt like she belonged. And there was that syncopated twist that she wanted to get right tonight. She knew if she kept a little more tension in her elbow and pushed back into her left foot that she—

“Ella?” She didn’t immediately hear Mrs. Beckley call her name. Her feet were shuffling under her desk, trying to get the step right. Was it toe-ball-heel, or ball-toe-heel? “Ella.”

She looked up. Mrs. Beckley—the whole class—was watching her. Mrs. Pierce, the secretary from the office, had come in and was staring at her, too. Their eyes on her were like feathers, wispy and faintly prickling.

“You need to go to the front office,” Mrs. Beckley said. “Get your things.”

Fear slithered in like cold, so faint she didn’t feel it immediately, only gradually becoming aware that it was wrapping itself around her. She barely remembered grabbing her geometry book, following Mrs. Pierce’s wide derriere out of the room and down the hall to where a man in a uniform waited for her.

A policeman. Now her fear was an ice pick, its chill stabbing into her; she was trembling. Mrs. Pierce was saying, “This is Officer Rocco. You need to go with him.” She helped Ella on with her coat, her gloves, her wooly hat. Ella couldn’t ask what had happened.

The officer was in his mid-thirties, with a mustache and big teeth. He seemed uncomfortable. “Please come with me. We’re going to see your father,” he said, and then, “You want a Life Saver?” He held out a silver roll of them. The top flavor was Lic-O-Rice.

Ever after, she hated the taste of licorice.

Officer Rocco offered her his hand. And even though she was fifteen and not a child anymore, she took it. His hand was warm and comforting.

“We’re going to get your sister,” he said after they were outside. Frannie was at the middle school down the street.

Finally, Ella found her voice. “What happened?”

“We’re going to your father,” he repeated, not answering the question. They descended the stairs and turned left, trudging through puddles of slush.

The licorice’s sickly sweetness flooded her mouth like bile.

“What’s going on?” she asked again. Her fear was everywhere now, she was breathing it in with the cold rawness of the slush and the winter afternoon.

Officer Rocco didn’t respond, seemingly intent on keeping his leather shoes dry. In a few moments they were at Frannie’s school. Inside, Ella huddled against the wall as the policeman went into the office, closing the door behind him. She snuck over, put her cheek on the smooth cool wood, listening, but could only hear the murmur of their voices.

Moments later the door opened and she snatched herself back. A secretary slipped up the corridor, returning a few minutes later with Frannie.

Ella’s sister was slightly plumper than Ella; she usually sported a wide grin and loved to stick her tongue out at adults when they weren’t looking. Now she seemed as frightened as Ella felt.

“Why are we here?” she asked Ella.

Officer Rocco answered instead, “I’m taking you to your father.”

“That’s all he’d tell me,” Ella muttered to her. She grabbed Frannie’s hand, who squeezed twice. Ella squeezed back. She was still terrified, but now with Frannie here she found the courage to announce, “My daddy’s at work. He don’t get off till five-thirty.” Joe wasn’t her real father, but everyone called him her daddy.

Officer Rocco just said, “Come along, girls” again, and they were outside, and the cold January sun was glaring.

None of them found more words. The Life Saver had dissolved, and the aftertaste lingered, pungent on Ella’s tongue. Frannie clutched her hand, and even though they both were wearing gloves, their grip was so tight that the knuckles of their fingers ground painfully together. The sound of their feet on the melting snow took on a hypnotic quality, the repetitive rhythm of a snare drum.

Ella thought of possibilities, trying to figure out what was going on. Had there been an accident? Had the apartment caught fire? Had Ella done something wrong and the school had found out—if so, what could it be? She played hooky a lot but they didn’t call a policeman for that, did they? Why were they going to her father and not her mother? Her mind spun.

He led them up School Street and then beyond their apartment building without stopping. “Wait,” Ella said, “this is where we live.”

The sun had disappeared into the clouds. The tired brick buildings were bleak and ominous.

“I’m actually taking you to—” he reached into a pocket, pulled out a small notepad—“to Irene Gulliver’s. You know Mrs. Gulliver, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Ella said. “She’s my friend Charles’s mother.” Ella was entirely confused. She’d left Charles back in the geometry classroom. She couldn’t understand why they were going to his mother’s house without him. There must be some mistake. Perhaps they meant to get Charles instead of Ella and Frannie. She wanted to ask but thought that Officer Rocco would think she was ignorant, so she held her tongue.

The brief trek next door to the Gullivers’ seemed endless. Again, they didn’t speak. Ella wasn’t sure what to say.

“We’ll be there in a bit, girls,” the policeman said, as if they didn’t know where they were. He hit the buzzer and the door opened immediately, without Mrs. Gulliver saying, “Who’s there?” over the intercom like she usually did. As if she’d known who’d be buzzing.

As they came off the elevator, she stood waiting for them in the open doorway, tall and strong, with a scarf over her hair. “Come in, girls, come in,” she said. “I made you bread pudding.”

“He said he’s taking me to my father,” Ella said. “Where’s Mama?”

Mrs. Gulliver looked at Officer Rocco. Ella desperately wanted to know and never wanted to find out what that look meant. She felt lightheaded, clutched Frannie’s hand even tighter. “When will my father be here?” she tried again.

“I want my mama,” Frannie said.

Mrs. Gulliver said. “Come on in, girls. I know you both must be hungry.”

They said goodbye to Officer Rocco and trooped in. Without Charles or his sister Annette—they both were still at school, of course—the apartment seemed too silent. Pictures of Jesus, palms up and bleeding, stared mournfully down at her. Tiny Victorian figurines whirled on shelves. The white couch was carefully covered with plastic. Ella knew better than to sit on it. She headed to the small linoleum table in the kitchen, where she and Charles often did homework. Sometimes they sat in the living room because the space there was bigger and they could move the armchair out of the way and “take a break”—Charles’s words—to practice dance steps when they were tired of homework. Ella didn’t feel like dancing. Her legs were shaking and she felt like she was going to be sick.

Mrs. Gulliver set a bowl of bread pudding in front of each of them. Eating came easily to Ella; she ate when she was nervous, anxious, upset, bored. She’d heard of people losing their appetites, but that had never happened to her, and it certainly didn’t happen now. The light reflected solemnly off the pudding’s surface, and she dug in with her spoon, grateful that the sweetness obliterated the Life Saver’s aftertaste. Frannie watched her eat, but Frannie only dipped the spoon into the bowl and took it out again, never putting it in her mouth. Ella cleaned out her bowl and eyed Frannie’s.

Finally the buzzer sounded. Again, Mrs. Gulliver let the person in without asking who it was. The girls followed her, leaving Frannie’s pudding and the spoons on the kitchen table. Mrs. Gulliver opened the door as Joe Da Silva lumbered up the hall.

Frannie ran to him and hugged him hard. Her head barely came to his chest. Joe stared at Ella, said nothing.

“Where’s my mama?” Ella demanded.

“Hospital,” Joe said, coming inside the apartment. His broken English and heavy Portuguese accent made his speech difficult to understand. Ella could decipher maybe half of what he said. Only her mother seemed able to clearly communicate with him.

“I want to see her! Let’s go.”

“No oose,” he said.

Oose? What was “oose”? “What do you mean?” Ella’s voice was shrill.

“No oose,” he tried again.

This time she understood. “No use? What do you mean there’s no use?”

“She’s gone, baby,” Mrs. Gulliver said. She leaned over as if to embrace her but Ella shook herself free. “Ella, come here, baby.”

Ella backed away from them and stood in the middle of the living room as if afraid to be too close. The walls contracted to pinpoints. Outside a siren wailed.

She looked from Mrs. Gulliver to Joe, who people could say was her daddy from now till forever. It would never be true. She just wanted her mother. “Gone?” she said. “What? Gone?”

“Dead,” Joe said. His goatee quivered. His cheekbones were high and pale. Tears welled in his eyes.

Her world closed in even further. “What did you do to her?”

“She dead,” Joe repeated.

“She’s dead?” Ella repeated. “What do you mean?” Some terrible part of Ella had expected this. The secrecy, the policeman, the calling of Joe, not Tempie.

And an even deeper part of her screamed out, remembering her thought the night before. I wish you were dead. There it was, manifested, materialized. Tempie was dead. The word was so terrible and so enormous. “She’s not dead,” she said. “I just saw her. She was washing sheets this morning.” Her mother couldn’t be gone. How could someone cooking meals, listening to Connee Boswell, fussing at her, scrubbing sheets, be dead? It was impossible. But her mother had winced in pain. What you gon’ do, her mother had asked her, as if she’d known.

Her mother had told her, “Don’t ’spute my word,” and Ella had hatefully talked back in her mind. I wish you were dead. Ella’s thoughts had been unspeakable, blasphemous. Now the realization was ripping into her: as soon as she’d thought those words, she’d cursed her mother, and she’d spited God, who’d commanded, Honor thy father and thy mother. She’d cursed herself, too. She deserved every terrible punishment that would come to her.

For years, in quiet moments, Ella would unearth the dark specter that gleamed like obsidian, hard as diamond, immovable as a planet, and she’d hold it out, its mirrored surface reflecting back a sorrow so vast that she could float upon it: Had she killed her mother?

“I know, baby,” Mrs. Gulliver said. She was twisting her hands in her skirt, looking as if she wanted to stride across the room, but Ella lurched backward, wrapping her arms protectively around her body. She couldn’t bear to be touched.

“You never took care of her,” she told Joe. She wanted to blame someone—anyone—but herself. “You a white man so you ain’t got no excuse for letting my mama down. She worked herself to death taking care of you. I hate you and you ain’t my father!”

Her chest felt close to bursting. It’s my fault, a voice kept repeating. It’s my fault she’s dead.

“Come here,” Mrs. Gulliver said, reaching, and Ella took another step away. She was standing far away from them now, near the window. She could go no farther.

Frannie was in Mrs. Gulliver’s arms, weeping. Ella stayed where she was, a body’s length or more from any of them. Shadows hovered just out of sight.

“Come on now, it’ll be alright,” Mrs. Gulliver was crooning to Frannie. “Hush there. You need to be strong. Your father needs you now.”

“We ain’t family,” Ella told her, and then to Joe, “I want to see her. I don’t believe you. You just don’t want us to see her. But nobody’s gonna keep me from my mama.”

Her stepfather was shaking his head. “She gone,” he said. “We go home.”

“I’m not going with you,” she told him, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself. “Which hospital is she at?”

“We go home,” he repeated, and tears brimmed, slid down his cheeks. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his faded gray overcoat. The elbow had worn through and a bit of red wool calico shirt poked out. Ella wanted to rip at the hole, shred the sleeve entirely.

“I’m going to see her,” Ella said. She looked around for her own coat. “I’m going to find her.”

“Joe, the girls need to see their mother or this is never going to end,” Mrs. Gulliver said.

“No, she gone now,” Joe said. “You remember her alive,” he told Ella. “Come home now.” And then, looking at Mrs. Gulliver, he said more gently to Ella: “Please.”

Years later, she understood what Joe had wanted for her. He believed that the living should be with the living. He wanted her last memory of Tempie to be full of color and spirit. Later, Ella understood that he was trying to protect Ella—protect her mother’s memory. Later, she’d realize what burdens were on Joe: no steady job, now no reliable income, no close family to help him arrange a decent burial and memorial service. But right then, and for years afterward, she hated him. She needed to see Tempie’s body, needed to assure herself that her mother hadn’t just left them, hadn’t just disappeared.

A commotion started up in the doorway as Charles and Annette burst in. “Mom,” Charles said, “You wouldn’t believe what—” he stopped, staring at them, and then his eyes caught Ella’s. He asked her, “Is everything alright?”

“No,” she said. She hugged herself tighter, as if more certain than ever that all the disparate parts of herself—the rage and grief, the sorrow and guilt—would shatter her whole. “Everything’s not alright.”

Mrs. Gulliver said to Charles, “Mrs. Da Silva passed away.” She was still holding Frannie, rocking her back and forth. “Joe, please let the girls stay with us tonight.”

Passed away. That phrase, the ring of resignation in it, threatened to undo Ella entirely. Passed away: she tried it out in her head, as if it were a foreign language.

“The girls, they come home with me now,” Joe said.

Mrs. Gulliver was telling her stepfather that it would be no trouble, that the girls shouldn’t be alone, that surely he had much to attend to, that being free of the girls underfoot would only be helpful. Ella couldn’t quite hear her, couldn’t quite process him standing there, listening to Mrs. Gulliver, considering.

“Okay,” he said at last. “The girls, they stay here tonight. Tomorrow morning I come for them.” Then to Ella, “No school tomorrow.”

Mrs. Gulliver said, “Of course. Let’s just give them tonight, okay? And they can come back here anytime. Anytime.”

Charles and Annette were still standing by the door. Annette’s mouth was open a little. Mrs. Gulliver made plans with Joe, and he went to embrace Frannie. She unglued herself from Mrs. Gulliver and clung to him, weeping. He gestured for Ella, but she stood apart.

After plans were made and set upon, Joe put on his hat and left. Ella leaned over toward the window to watch him, and only then remembered that the window looked out onto a fire escape and the back alley, not their apartment on School Street.

*  *  *

A few years ago, Tempie had been in a car accident. Some children were playing in the street as a car barreled toward them. She’d leaped into action, pushed the kids to the side, and the car had struck her a glancing blow on her side and back. She’d been black and blue for days, and ever since had winced when she had to carry heavy loads, like the laundry bags. Maybe this accident had somehow killed her. Ella needed to know how she’d died.

She refused to cry. The room now seemed enormous, as if the walls and the plastic-covered white couch were too far away to reach. She wanted to see the body. See for herself that her mother was really “gone.” After dinner—food she never remembered eating—she asked Mrs. Gulliver for another helping of pudding, and Mrs. Gulliver filled Ella’s bowl. She sat alone in the kitchen, spooning it in mechanically. The sweetness soothed the ache in her, and after some time she started feeling sleepy, still holding the spoon. Mrs. Gulliver guided her to Charles and Annette’s room, to a makeshift bed made from folded blankets and extra winter clothes.

Frannie was still sobbing but finally fell asleep. Ella lay next to her, staring up at the ceiling silvered in the reflected glow of the streetlights. Charles had barely spoken to her, as if she were diseased, as if she were a liability (and that voice deep inside her agreed with him: she was a terrible girl, she deserved this). When she was smaller, she’d often stayed over and they’d whispered and laughed until well after midnight, but tonight it was as if she were deaf, or sick. Something to be pitied, but not touched. That, too, was how she felt about herself.
弗兰妮还在抽泣，但终于睡着了。艾拉躺在她旁边，盯着在路灯反射的光芒下银色的天花板。查尔斯几乎没和她说过话，仿佛她得了病，仿佛她是个累赘（她内心深处的那个声音同意他的观点：她是个可怕的女孩，她活该）。当她小的时候，她经常呆过来，他们窃窃私语，大笑，直到午夜过后，但今晚她好像聋了，或者生病了。值得怜悯，但不能触摸的东西。这也是她对自己的感觉。

The silence was a weight that pressed her down. If only there were music. She played Louis Armstrong in her head, “Blue Turning Grey Over You,” where the singer misses his beloved. For the first time that day, tears warmed the sides of her cheeks. She stared up into nothing. Her mother had loved music. She’d loved how the Boswell Sisters’ tight harmonics wrapped around each other. Outside the kitchen, her mother only ever sang in church, loud and unapologetic, raising her voice to the Lord; and Ella next to her would feel her own voice twine with her mother’s. She’d been proud of her mother’s voice, so rich and assured, so smooth.
寂静是压在她身上的重担。要是有音乐就好了。她在脑海中播放路易斯·阿姆斯特朗（Louis Armstrong）的《Blue Turning Grey Over You》，这位歌手想念他心爱的人。那天，泪水第一次温暖了她的脸颊两侧。她盯着什么都没有。她的母亲喜欢音乐。她喜欢博斯韦尔姐妹紧密的谐波如何相互缠绕。在厨房外，她的母亲只在教堂里唱歌，大声而毫无歉意，向主提高声音;而她旁边的艾拉会感觉到她自己的声音和她母亲的声音交织在一起。她为她母亲的声音感到骄傲，如此浑厚，如此自信，如此流畅。

Ella thought of the gospel hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Quiet, her voice no more than a rumble on her tongue, she whispered the words.
艾拉想起了福音圣诗《奇异的恩典》。她的声音很安静，只不过是舌头上的隆隆声，她低声说着这些话。

Maybe her mother was happier now. She knew that the church mothers, who always wore white, would tell her, “She’s in a better place, child, she’s with her Lord.” The church ladies were right, no doubt. Any place was better than School Street, with its boiling cauldrons of wash water and the lye burning her hands, and the heavy endless laundry stained with other people’s lives. But her mother couldn’t have wanted to leave Ella and Frannie.
也许她的母亲现在更快乐了。她知道，那些总是穿白色衣服的教会母亲会告诉她，“孩子，她处在一个更好的地方，她和她的主在一起。毫无疑问，教会的女士们是对的。任何一个地方都比学校街好，那里有沸腾的洗涤水和烫伤她手的碱液，还有沉重的无休止的衣物沾满了别人的生活。但她的母亲不可能想离开艾拉和弗兰妮。

She didn’t even know how her mother had died, except that she’d collapsed at work, at the Silver Lining Laundry. She wondered if her mother had been alone. She hoped someone tried to help her. Did Tempie cry out for Ella?
她甚至不知道她的母亲是怎么死的，只知道她在工作中晕倒在一线洗衣店。她想知道她的母亲是否独自一人。她希望有人试图帮助她。坦皮为艾拉哭泣了吗？

She imagined her mother’s last moments bent over the stewing wash bins of stained sheets, the heat beating against her face. The rolling boil had a rhythm to it, and as Ella lay there in the dark, in this first night of the rest of her life, she pictured her mother, just before she collapsed, mouthing the words to “I Found Million Dollar Baby (In A Five and Ten Cent Store).” She’d heard different versions of the song before, but Miss Fanny Brice’s version was all the rage right now. She wasn’t sure why she thought of the song, but the melody was in her head and would not leave, a song about unexpected love and spring rain.
她想象着母亲最后的时刻，她弯下腰，炖着沾满污渍的床单，热气拍打着她的脸。滚滚的疖子是有节奏的，当艾拉躺在黑暗中时，在她余生的第一个晚上，她想象着她的母亲，就在她倒下之前，嘴里念叨着“我发现了百万美元的宝贝（在一家五美分和十美分的商店里）”。她以前听过这首歌的不同版本，但范妮·布莱斯小姐的版本现在风靡一时。她不知道自己为什么会想到这首歌，但旋律在她的脑海中，不会离开，一首关于意外爱情和春雨的歌。

She held on to that image of her mother singing, and tried to forget the song that Tempie had been singing when Ella had last seen her, Bessie Smith’s “Down Hearted Blues,” a song that spoke of weariness and hardship and heartbreak. A life that had never been lived. The price of living had been too high.
她紧紧抓住母亲唱歌的画面，试图忘记艾拉最后一次见到她时坦比唱的那首歌，贝茜·史密斯（Bessie Smith）的《心灰意冷的蓝调》（Down Hearted Blues），这首歌讲述了疲惫、艰辛和心碎。从未有过的生活。生活价格太高了。

Ella squeezed her eyes tight, trying to convince herself that in her last moments, her mother had heard music.
艾拉紧紧地盯着自己，试图说服自己，在她最后的时刻，她的母亲听到了音乐。

The day after her mother’s funeral, Ella woke to silence, except for a sparrow flitting about on the fire escape, chirping earnestly. For an instant she thought she heard the soft brush of her mother’s house shoes, but it was only the eerie quiet of total stillness. Her mother should have been mixing pancake batter or cornbread, and preparing Joe’s Eight O’Clock coffee if it had been a good week. She would have been humming her spirituals or one of the popular songs she listened to on the phonograph. She should have been calling Ella’s name. That was the worst part. No “Ella” from her voice.
在她母亲葬礼后的第二天，艾拉醒来时一片寂静，只有一只麻雀在消防通道上飞来飞去，认真地啁啾着。有那么一瞬间，她以为自己听到了母亲家常鞋的轻柔擦肩声，但那只是完全寂静的诡异安静。她的母亲应该正在混合煎饼面糊或玉米面包，并准备乔的八点钟咖啡，如果这是一个美好的一周。她会哼唱她的灵歌或她在留声机上听的一首流行歌曲。她应该叫艾拉的名字。这是最糟糕的部分。 她的声音中没有“艾拉”。

It was as if Ella, too, no longer existed.
就好像艾拉也不再存在一样。

She lay in bed, waiting for her stepfather to stir, to wake her. The windup alarm clock next to her bed pointed at 6:30, then 6:45. Her mother would have been standing over her by now.
她躺在床上，等着继父醒来，叫醒她。她床边的闹钟指向6：30，然后是6：45。她的母亲现在应该站在她身边了。

She waited. 她等着。

Seven o’clock. Joe should have been out of bed. His job unloading shipping containers off a river barge was still new, and she knew that he needed to be at work—he’d gotten two days off to deal with her mother’s death, but that was it. Perhaps he’d already left. Perhaps he’d gotten drunk the night before and passed out on the street. He’d torn up the living room a few times over the years, after her mother had lugged his dead weight through the front door. Ella hoped that she wouldn’t have to do that. She refused to carry him like her mother had.
七点钟。乔应该起床了。他从内河驳船上卸下集装箱的工作还是新工作，她知道他需要上班——他有两天的假期来处理她母亲的去世，但仅此而已。也许他已经离开了。也许他前一天晚上喝醉了，昏倒在街上。这些年来，在她母亲拖着他的沉重物穿过前门之后，他几次把客厅拆毁了。艾拉希望她不必那样做。她拒绝像她母亲那样抱着他。

Yesterday Ella had stayed away from him, resentment simmering. If he’d only been more help to Tempie—if only they’d all been more help to Tempie—she’d still be alive. Tempie had always been slightly dazzled with him just because he was white. But he’d never pulled his own weight.
昨天艾拉远离了他，怨恨正在酝酿。如果他能对坦皮多一点帮助——要是他们都对坦皮多一点帮助就好了——她还活着。坦皮总是对他有点眼花缭乱，只是因为他是白人。但他从来没有拉过自己的体重。

Ella had never known her natural father.
艾拉从来不认识她的亲生父亲。

Long ago, back in Virginia, William Fitzgerald had left Tempie and Ella when she was three. Soon after, Tempie had taken up with Joe Da Silva, then a gentle Portuguese immigrant who barely spoke English. Tempie never talked about William Fitzgerald’s disappearance from their life, and Ella had given up trying to ask questions. Tempie had understood Joe’s pidgin English and had given him a home and, eventually, his own daughter, Frannie.
很久以前，回到弗吉尼亚州，威廉·菲茨杰拉德（William Fitzgerald）在她三岁时就离开了坦比和艾拉。不久之后，坦皮与乔·达席尔瓦（Joe Da Silva）在一起，乔·达席尔瓦（Joe Da Silva）当时是一位温和的葡萄牙移民，几乎不会说英语。坦皮从未谈论过威廉·菲茨杰拉德从他们的生活中消失的事情，而艾拉也放弃了提问的尝试。坦比听懂了乔的洋泾浜英语，并给了他一个家，并最终给了他自己的女儿弗兰妮。

Joe had, over time, become her papa. When she was small, he’d lift her onto his knees, comically try to braid her hair with his thick fingers. He’d take walks with her and sometimes even bought her chocolate ice cream, her favorite. He was a big man and handsome—high cheekbones, glittering smile, broad shoulders. Swarthy, olive-skinned, but white nevertheless. He navigated through the world with white man authority. Their household held more stature because of him. The neighbors deferred to Tempie when they sat out front, and greeted the family with respect on the street and in the neighborhood.
随着时间的流逝，乔成为了她的爸爸。当她还小的时候，他会把她抱到膝盖上，滑稽地试图用他粗壮的手指给她编辫子。他会和她一起散步，有时甚至会给她买巧克力冰淇淋，这是她最喜欢的。他身材魁梧，英俊潇洒——高颧骨，灿烂的笑容，宽阔的肩膀。黝黑，橄榄色皮肤，但仍然是白色的。他以白人的权威在世界上航行。由于他，他们的家庭地位更高。当邻居们坐在前面时，他们听从了坦皮，并在街上和附近尊重地向这家人打招呼。

When Ella was a toddler, he’d persuaded Tempie to move from Virginia up to Yonkers, settling them in an Italian neighborhood where he felt at home. Sometimes neighbors would mistake Tempie for Joe’s housekeeper; and sometimes, when the family wasn’t with Joe, people they didn’t know hurled racial slurs at them.
当艾拉还是个蹒跚学步的孩子时，他说服坦皮从弗吉尼亚州搬到扬克斯，把他们安置在一个意大利社区，在那里他有宾至如归的感觉。有时邻居会把坦皮误认为是乔的管家;有时，当家人不在乔身边时，他们不认识的人会向他们投掷种族诽谤。

This never happened when Joe was with them.
当乔和他们在一起时，这从未发生过。

The breadlines often stretched long down the street, around corners, but their family rarely stood in them. Tempie’s regular job at the laundry, supplemented by Joe’s more spotty work, paid the bills.
面包线经常在街上延伸很长，在拐角处，但他们的家人很少站在里面。坦皮在洗衣店的常规工作，加上乔更参差不齐的工作，支付了账单。

Ella wasn’t sure when her relationship with Joe had changed. In the past few years he never braided her hair anymore and only bought her ice cream when he bought it for the rest of the family. She was okay with the changed relationship—she was older now, and had friends—but she missed the loving way he used to grin at her, grab her hand in odd moments, and rub her hair the wrong way. Well, perhaps now that Tempie was gone, in their shared grief Ella and Joe would grow closer again.
艾拉不确定她和乔的关系什么时候发生了变化。在过去的几年里，他再也不给她编辫子了，只在给家里其他人买冰淇淋的时候给她买冰淇淋。她对这种改变的关系感到满意——她现在年纪大了，有了朋友——但她怀念他过去对她咧嘴一笑、在奇怪的时刻抓住她的手、用错误的方式揉她的头发的那种充满爱意的方式。好吧，也许现在坦比走了，在他们共同的悲伤中，艾拉和乔会再次变得更加亲密。

At 7:15—now she worried that she and Frannie would be late to school—she tossed back the covers and went in search of him. Joe had told them last night that they’d have to go to school today, and he had to go to work. Life had to go on.
7点15分，她担心自己和弗兰妮上学会迟到，于是她把被子扔回去，去找他。乔昨晚告诉他们，他们今天必须去上学，他必须去上班。生活还得继续。

The tiny apartment was dark and cold without Tempie. Even the swish of Tempie’s layered skirts as she moved about had created warmth. But no mother had started the stove, no mother made cornbread, no mother boiled hot water for the laundry she’d taken in to earn extra dollars.
小公寓很暗，很冷，没有Tempie。就连坦皮走动时分层裙子的嗖嗖声也产生了温暖。但是没有母亲开过炉子，没有母亲做过玉米面包，没有母亲烧热水洗衣服，赚点外快。

Joe was sleeping on one side of her mother’s double bed, clutching tightly to her mother’s pillow as if trying to hold on to something that wasn’t there.
乔睡在她母亲双人床的一侧，紧紧地抓着她母亲的枕头，仿佛试图抓住不存在的东西。

“Hey,” Ella said, touching his arm, terrified for a moment that he had died, too. But his arm was warm and he stirred against the sheets. Ella exhaled. “Don’t we have to get up?”
“嘿，”艾拉说，摸着他的胳膊，害怕了一会儿，他也死了。但他的胳膊很暖和，他在床单上搅动。艾拉呼出一口气。“我们不用起床吗？”

He rolled over, opened one eye, mumbled something. She thought he’d said, “Breakfast.”
他翻了个身，睁开一只眼睛，喃喃自语着什么。她以为他说，“早餐。

“Aren’t you going to make it for us?” she asked. “We’ve got to get ready for school. We’re going to be late.”
“你不打算为我们做吗？”她问。“我们必须为上学做好准备。我们会迟到的。

“You make,” he said. “Ten minnit.”
“你做，”他说。“十分钟。”

“I don’t know how to cook,” Ella said. “Mama did the cooking.”
“我不会做饭，”艾拉说。“妈妈做饭了。”

“You make.” He closed his eyes, squeezed the pillow to him.
“你做。”他闭上眼睛，把枕头塞给他。

“I don’t know how to make anything,” she tried again. “And I have to be in school.”
“我不知道怎么做，”她又试了一次。“而且我必须上学。”

“Do it,” he said. He didn’t open his eyes, and something about his tone made Ella not want to argue.
“去做吧，”他说。他没有睁开眼睛，他的语气有些让艾拉不想争辩。

He was the adult—he should be the one making breakfast. She only knew how to make simple meals: hominy grits, eggs, toast. Tempie usually prepared the more elaborate breakfasts like cornbread or pancakes, both from scratch. Her mother had always told Ella that she was going to teach her to cook. “Really cook,” Tempie would tell her, “the way my mama taught me.” But Ella had had no interest in learning. Besides, her mother was usually too exhausted to chase her down and drag her into the kitchen. Still, Ella was willing to try.
他是大人——他应该是做早餐的人。她只知道如何做简单的饭菜：粗粥、鸡蛋、吐司。Tempie通常从头开始准备更精致的早餐，如玉米面包或煎饼。她的母亲一直告诉艾拉，她要教她做饭。“真的会做饭，”坦皮会告诉她，“我妈妈教我的方式。但艾拉对学习没有兴趣。此外，她的母亲通常太累了，无法追赶她并拖她进厨房。尽管如此，艾拉还是愿意尝试。

With relief she remembered that neighbors had left casseroles and cakes, stews and soups. The tiny icebox was filled, as was the interior of the hulking stove in the corner. More platters glittered on the fire escape, frozen in the January cold. She unwrapped a Depression cake sweetened with raisins and cut out three big chunks. It was dry and crumbly, and they had no butter. No tea, either. Joe liked his Eight O’Clock coffee—they still had a little left—but Ella just stared mistrustfully at the coffee pot. She had no idea how it worked, and wasn’t going to try. At twenty-five cents a pound for the coffee beans, she didn’t want to mess it up.
她松了一口气，想起邻居们留下了砂锅菜、蛋糕、炖菜和汤。小小的冰箱装满了，角落里笨重的炉子内部也装满了。更多的盘子在消防通道上闪闪发光，在一月的寒冷中被冻结。她打开一个用葡萄干加糖的大萧条蛋糕，切出三大块。它又干又脆，而且他们没有黄油。也没有茶。乔喜欢他的八点钟咖啡——他们还剩下一点——但艾拉只是不信任地盯着咖啡壶。她不知道它是如何工作的，也不打算尝试。咖啡豆每磅二十五美分，她不想把它搞砸。

Ella grew resentful as she prepared their cold breakfast, banging pots more loudly than necessary on the stove and slamming the cabinets. When Frannie peeped into the kitchen, Ella barked that breakfast wasn’t ready yet.
艾拉在准备冷早餐时变得怨恨起来，在炉子上敲打锅的声音比必要的大，还砰的一声砸在橱柜上。当弗兰妮偷看厨房时，艾拉咆哮着说早餐还没有准备好。

The funeral—closed casket—had been small, as if a shameful secret, and in an unfamiliar storefront church, since Joe didn’t have enough money to hold services at the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Gulliver family, Tempie’s sister Virginia, her daughter Georgie, and a few other friends attended, but many of their neighbors and her mother’s acquaintances shied away as if to spare them embarrassment.
葬礼——封闭的棺材——很小，仿佛是一个可耻的秘密，而且在一个陌生的店面教堂里，因为乔没有足够的钱在伯大尼非洲卫理公会圣公会教堂举行礼拜。格列佛一家、坦皮的妹妹弗吉尼亚、她的女儿乔吉和其他一些朋友都参加了，但他们的许多邻居和她母亲的熟人都回避了，仿佛是为了避免他们的尴尬。

Ella, Frannie, and Joe had sat in the front row. The paid minister had droned on about “taken before her time” and “at peace with the Lord.” The coffin stretched in front of Ella, but she couldn’t fathom her mother lying immobile inside the pine box. She imagined that any minute her mother would yell out that she was trapped, Ella would rush to the coffin and rip off the lid, grab Frannie, and the three of them would tear out of this mistaken world. Her mother could not be dead.
艾拉、弗兰妮和乔坐在前排。这位受薪的牧师喋喋不休地谈论“在她的时代之前”和“与主和平相处”。棺材在艾拉面前伸展，但她无法理解她的母亲躺在松木箱里一动不动。她想象着，只要母亲大喊她被困住了，艾拉就会冲到棺材前，扯开棺盖，抓住弗兰妮，他们三个人就会从这个错误的世界里扯出来。她的母亲不可能死了。

Before she quite realized what she was doing, she was sliding out of the pews and running up to the casket. She was shouting something—“Mama, I’m coming”?—but afterward she couldn’t even remember. She was at the casket and trying to pry up the lid before anyone else reacted.

It was nailed shut. Her fingers scrabbled in the seam but couldn’t pry it loose.

And then the adults—Joe, the minister, Aunt Virginia—were pulling her away. Aunt Virginia wrapped her arm around Ella and sat with her out in the entryway until she finally grew calm enough to rejoin the service.

At the grave site, as the wind blew stark in her face, a sparrow had hopped about, chirping and looking for seed. It looked so much like the bird that lived on their fire escape, but of course that was impossible. The sparrow had bounced on the frozen grass, glancing one way, tilting its head the other. Ella couldn’t stop watching it, how it seemed more alive than she was. The cemetery had smelled of snow, but only a few flakes fell from the dense clouds. The wind buffeted them and Ella dug her fingers deeper into the pockets of her coat. The seams had given way and the inner lining was rough on her fingertips. She huddled close to her sister, bumping shoulders. That was some comfort.

Now, as she banged around in the kitchen, Ella was grateful that Tempie’s friends had at least sent condolences in the tangible form of food.

She yelled into the quiet of the apartment, trying to sound like her mother. “Breakfast! Come on, you two! Get up. Time to get going!”

Movement came from the bedrooms, and a toilet flushed. In the meantime, Ella wolfed down her piece of cake, not even tasting it. She put the other two pieces on plates and set them on the kitchen table. Then she cut three wedges from a macaroni, cheese, and hot dog casserole, and wrapped them in scraps of wax paper for their lunches.

Back in her bedroom, Frannie had fallen back to sleep. She’d been sleeping for ten, twelve hours a night in the days since Tempie’s passing. “Come on, you gotta get up,” Ella told her, pulling out a skirt and blouse for Frannie that her mama had ironed, folded, and left neatly in the bureau. Ella would have to iron now. “I left you a piece of cake. It’s on the table.”

Frannie sniffed, as if she had a cold. “I want Mama.”

“Well you got cake instead.” Ella slipped into one of her good skirts, combed her hair with her fingers. It seemed like too much work to brush it. “You’ll like it. It has raisins.”

Frannie was no longer trying to dress. She was sitting now at the edge of her unmade bed, head down, hands dangling limp between her legs.

“Come on. Get dressed,” Ella said.

Frannie didn’t move. She was crying, but quietly, and something broke inside Ella. She found herself sitting next to her sister, wrapping her tight, pulling her close. Frannie sobbed into her shoulder. “Why did Mama leave me?” she said, her voice muffled. “What did I do bad?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Ella said, rocking her now, Ella’s own words I wish you were dead haunting her even now. “We have to be big girls. We have to get dressed and we have to go to school. You know Mama would want us—” Her voice cracked and she had to take a second to finish. “Want us to go to school.”

Although Frannie sometimes left after Ella—Frannie had a friend down the street who she’d meet, and they’d walk together—today Ella waited for her to shrug into her sweater, pull up her socks, and tie her shoes.

“You gotta eat,” Ella told her, handing her a piece of the Depression cake, which Frannie held in one hand. “You can eat it on the way.”

No way her mama would have let the girls have all that cake, Ella thought, and for a moment the grayness lifted around her.

On their way out, Ella stopped by her mother’s bedroom. Joe was where she’d left him, head still under the covers. He’d used the bathroom and returned to bed. “Papa,” she said, a name she’d called him until she’d become a teenager and realized he wasn’t her real father. Now “Papa” sounded even more distant from her, but she was grasping for someone to hold on to. “I left you a piece of cake on the table. You gonna be late.”

He didn’t stir, didn’t respond.

Frannie slipped past her. “Papa? We’re going to school now, okay?”

He rolled over, blinked. “See you,” he said. He sounded either asleep or hopeless, or both.

The food ran out ten days after the funeral.

Until then, the days unfolded in a grief-addled blur: Ella carving up the neighbors’ offerings, then heading to school with Frannie, then heading home in the afternoons. She held herself tightly, avoiding everyone, afraid she’d burst into tears at the first sign of someone’s pity.

Joe never mentioned Ella working in the laundry, and Ella didn’t remind him. Perhaps he didn’t even know. So she’d planned on making additional money by dancing. It was too soon to practice her steps with Charles, too soon to dance at the Yonkers clubs or check out the latest steps in Harlem, but sometime—soon—she’d start up again.

She missed Charles but still wanted to be alone. In the quiet afternoons when she returned from school, she’d sing along to the Victrola, play Louis Armstrong, the Boswell Sisters, trying to escape the gloomy uncertainty of being motherless. In music she recalled Tempie’s strong vibrato, her tapping feet, and her world, for a few moments, became solid again.

It wasn’t just dancing that Ella loved. It was music. The bebop bounce of jazz, the lushness of the orchestras, the elegance and upbeat charm of ragtime, the broken-hearted despair of the blues: all of it gave her joy. A clarinet playing on a street corner would lift her spirits; the sudden roar of the big bands was guaranteed to send her heart thumping in unison. Although she’d wanted to be a dancer ever since she was small—her mother always encouraged her—singing also came easily. Ella would listen obsessively, over and over, to a single song. The Boswell Sisters became her own favorite, and she practiced all the songs in the hard, swinging Boswell style.

As the days passed, neighbors stopped by, paid their calls, and collected their dishes and trays and platters. One night, when she went to pull out something for supper, the empty icebox terrified her. She didn’t understand why Joe hadn’t gone shopping, and she worried that he was spending all his wages out drinking. Except for a few bottles of his beer, the shelves yawned vast and desolate. The kitchen cabinets were similar: a half box of oatmeal, a half tin of flour, a few elderly cans of peas. She didn’t know what they’d eat. The entire idea of dinner seemed beyond her, impossible as dancing with James Cagney or singing in a movie. She didn’t know what she could cook with these ingredients. She had no turnips, cheese, hot dogs, or macaroni, and no money to buy them.

She panicked, wondering about Joe’s reaction. He’d always been perfectly civil to her; there was no reason for her to be so worried, but there it was: she was frightened. He hadn’t been the same since her mother passed. He seemed frustrated by his inability to communicate, frustrated to be eating leftovers, frustrated that Ella and Frannie weren’t Tempie.

She pulled down the cardboard container of Quaker Antique Oats and set them to simmering on the stove, then boiled some potatoes and carrots.

Ella was beginning to have a sense of just how much Tempie had done for them. It should have been obvious but it wasn’t, not until suddenly the tasks were undone if Ella didn’t do them herself. I’m so tired, her mother had said that last night.

Half an hour later, the oatmeal was ready, the potatoes and carrots steaming. It wasn’t a great dinner, but Ella was proud of it. She had cooked and set the table like Tempie. She’d decided that she was grown up and could discuss the bills and the rent with Joe that evening.

She’d just finished putting out the food in serving dishes when Joe burst in and shrugged out of his overcoat. He didn’t greet her, stomped instead to the icebox and opened one of the last bottles of Columbia Beer. Just a week ago the bottom shelf had been stocked, but now only one bottle remained.

“What this?” he said, looking at the set table.

“It’s dinner. I cooked it like Mama. We don’t have a lot. I need to go shopping,” she explained.

He grabbed a spoon, leaned over the pot of potatoes and carrots, dipped the spoon in, and tasted. He rolled his eyes, spat it out onto a plate, dropped the spoon on the floor.

“I work all day and you feed me this?” He towered over her.

“It’s all we have,” she said, backing up a step. “We need to go food shopping. Anyway, I don’t know what to buy and you didn’t give me any money.”

“Food taste like—like mud.” He gestured but she didn’t understand. “You do what Mama do.”

“I don’t know what she did,” Ella said.

That set him back. “You buy,” he told her, pulling a handful of coins out of his pocket and slapping them on the table.

“It’s too late now,” she said. “Stores are closed.”

He stared balefully at her oatmeal. “Work hard today. No oatmeal, you hear? Real food.”

“Well this is all we have,” she said.

He didn’t answer, looking instead pointedly at one side of the couch, where a pile of Ella’s and Frannie’s clothes lay in a heap. “This house a mess. You clean. Like your Mama. It your job now.” He kicked their shoes and clothing to the side. “Stinks. This place.”

He took one more look at her and at the room, and shambled out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

In the sudden emptiness, she glared at the oatmeal, wanting to be mad, but Joe was right. The apartment was a mess. Clothes clumped in the corners, the trash can spilled over, and Tempie’s favorite lamp was broken, crouched on the floor in the corner, its shade cracked. She wondered if Joe had broken it.

A year or so ago, her mother had brought the lamp home, so proud of it. “This looks like a Tiffany lamp,” her mother had said. “You see the cut of the glass and the different colors?” She trailed her fingers over it, admiring. “It’s not a real Tiffany but for me it is. Remember, there’s more to life than what you see around here. There are Tiffany lamps.”

Until that last night, her mother had always fed Ella’s dreams, told her not to give up. There was the “never give up” poem, in red ink, folded next to her bed.

“You’re better than me. You gon’ be more than a colored laundress,” Tempie would tell her, stroking her hair. “You’re goin’ places ’cause you have talent and I’m telling you so. But talent ain’t enough. You have to want it bad. Don’t you ever quit trying to make something of yourself.”

Ella had grown up hearing this kind of encouragement. Her mother had even ventured out a couple times to local Yonkers clubs to watch Charles and Ella perform. Sometimes she’d even dance with Ella in the living room. Ella remembered one time, several months ago, when Tempie had put Ma Rainey’s “Black Cat, Hoot Owl Blues” on the phonograph, raised her skirt, and began swaying back and forth to the blues music. Then, effortless, she swung her hips around and her feet slid into a tap-dance shuffle.

“You think you were the only one who could dance?” Tempie grinned at her. Ella must have looked dumbfounded. “I’ll have you know that I was known for my fine legs and my smile.” She twitched her skirt. “I had boys and menfolk lined up to dance with me.” A shuffle, hop, and ball change. “Bet you had no idea.”

“No ma’am,” Ella said, and her giggle burst into laughter. Tempie laughed, too, hands on her hips, shaking her head.

The music ended, the needle bumping on the inside track of the record. Her mama lifted the needle off, closed the lid. “Me and your auntie wanted to have what they called a minstrel act. Your grandma would talk on about Scott Joplin and his ragtime piano. We was about your age. We didn’t know nothing.”

“So you wanted to be a dancer, too?”

“Dance some, sing some,” Tempie had said. “I know you want to dance.”

Ella nodded, suddenly feeling shy.

“Don’t be embarrassed ever about wanting to make something beautiful for the world,” her mother had said. “If that’s what you want, you got to make it happen. Even if it’s hard, and it’ll be hard. But if you want it bad, you can do it.”

Tempie had promised her the chance to pursue her dreams, and then backed down, gotten Ella a job at the laundry. The feeling of having been betrayed welled up in her all over again.

Still standing in the kitchen, she slid into a time-step-shuffle, just to do it. She would dance—she’d trap her dreams, catch them, and then follow them to the end of her days, just like Mama had promised.

She tried a Lindy Hop shimmy into a grape chain. One of her outstretched hands knocked into a plate that had been left precariously on the edge of the counter. It whizzed back, clanking into other dishes and knocking over a half-filled glass of water.

With new eyes Ella turned to the kitchen, where she’d left the crusted pot of oatmeal. Dishes piled in the sink and on the counter, days-old food scabbing the plates and glassware. The floor was sticky and the air rich with the sweet rot of garbage. There wasn’t much soap left to clean with. Without ammonia, vinegar, or lye she couldn’t make new soap. She checked in the bathroom and under the kitchen cabinets.

Ella had never envisioned herself sweeping, washing, or ironing, but she realized that was how Joe saw her. She felt unmoored, as if without her mother she’d lost her own identity. She didn’t know who she was without Tempie fussing at her, brushing her hair, kissing her, telling her she was pretty.

“You can be whatever you want to be with your dancing self,” Tempie would tell her.

Her dancing self would have to clean the kitchen. And Frannie could help.

“Frannie, get out here,” she yelled, and when her sister appeared, Ella ordered her to take out the garbage while she tackled the dishes. The next few hours, the girls scrubbed and cleaned. They ate most of the oatmeal, carrots, and potatoes, leaving a serving for Joe, and went to sleep before he came home.

Joe’s slam of the door at midnight woke Ella, the thump of his boots on the floor, the rustle of his coat as he flung it somewhere, probably onto the couch. Hopefully he noticed the apartment was now tidy, all the dishes washed and dried and tucked back in their cupboard. Probably he was sorry he yelled at her. Probably he’d come into their room, see if she was awake; or, like he used to do, lay one hand gently on her forehead in apology; or perhaps he’d kiss her forehead, thinking she was asleep.

Instead, he stomped into the kitchen, wheezing and coughing. The floorboards squealed under his weight. He’d gotten heavier lately, and she could often hear him breathing when he performed even simple tasks.

Now in the kitchen, opening the icebox, Ella could hear Joe gurgling down that last beer with the icebox door open. On the stove she’d left him his plate covered with a clean cloth. His belly was probably full of the hot meal he’d have gotten somewhere, a dinner of meat and potatoes, thick bread with butter, and maybe even some chocolate pie for dessert. She wasn’t resentful, though. She felt sorry for him. Sorry for herself, too. They both missed her mother.

She knew he wasn’t a bad man. Even in her grief she recognized his loneliness, a twin to her own. Her mother had been his lifeline. Tempie had always been the buffer between him and everything else, including her daughters. Despite his hopes that an Italian neighborhood would give him a sense of home and place, it was really Tempie who gave that to him. She was the connection between him, the bewildering bustle of Yonkers, and the overwhelming customs of America.

In Portugal he’d lived on a farm. His family had two cows, a goat, and dozens of chickens. They made goat’s milk cheese. Yonkers was horns blaring and mean brick buildings blotting out the sky.

Joe was at the bedroom door. “Where food?” he said, his voice loud in the dark.

Frannie was asleep, or faking sleep. Joe’s voice from earlier in the evening echoed in Ella’s ear: Your job now. Like Mama.

Ella got up quickly, slid past him, closing the door to the bedroom. In the kitchen she pointed to the plate. “It’s right here,” she said. “You want me to heat it up for you?”

Now he’d apologize, she thought. He’d say that they would have to forge ahead together. That they were still a family, even without Tempie to nourish and sustain them all.

“It cold,” he said and she realized that he was very drunk. “I work hard. Want my hot food.”

“I’ll heat it up,” she said, picking up the food, preparing to put it into pots and warm it on the stove, but whether on purpose or by accident—she never knew—he knocked her hand and sent the plate spinning out of her grasp. The oatmeal made a vicious streak on the linoleum tile. The carrots and potatoes bounced and skittered under the sink.

And the plate shattered, shards everywhere. “You made me drop it!” she yelled at him.

She moved toward the closet to retrieve the broom and he grabbed her arm. “You clean!” He pointed to the floor, as if she didn’t see it.

It was the middle of the night. Her mother was dead. Her stepfather was drunk. She was fifteen years old. It all seemed too much. The distance between what she’d envisioned for the night—Joe’s apology and a moment of bonding—and what had happened felt like two separate realities.

She said instead, “No. I no clean,” mocking him, pulling her arm away. His paw clamped onto her arm again, thumb digging hard into her shoulder. His breath was a rasp, hot on her neck.

She yelped and tried to snatch her arm back; he tightened his grip. His fingers pressed against the bone of her arm.

“Let me go,” she told him, looking up, staring him down. She could feel him recoil, feel him almost release her. She shook herself free. “Don’t you hurt me,” she told him, backing up to get the broom. “Mama would never let you hurt me.”

He slapped her face—hard. She had turned toward the pantry, so she didn’t see the blow coming. She crashed into the stove and the wall. “Your mama not here. This my house,” he roared. “You do what I say!”

She held her cheek and glared at him, furious and terrified. Rage and powerlessness brought her to tears even more than the pain radiating in her temple and left ear.

“Too bad,” he was saying. “You work. Like Mama. You clean. Still mess.” He pointed to the floor, to the pile of dirty laundry that she and Frannie had heaped up in a corner earlier that evening.

Slowly she staggered to the broom closet, extracted the broom, swept up the shattered plate and the carrots and the biggest potato chunks. Slowly she filled a bucket with water and found a rag and sponged up the oatmeal. She thought the rag was dripping water and realized that her tears were spattering on the floor. Joe watched her, saying nothing. She could feel him gloating, sure that he’d bested her.

He had.

She was lost in her own grief, so perhaps that was the reason she didn’t realize until long afterward how the death of her mother must have changed Joe so dramatically. While Tempie was alive, he was a decent man. Lazy, maybe, not great at work, but he was reliable. After Tempie had gone, the rage that may have always been there—disappointment over his life, frustrations that Ella would never understand—tore through. When food regularly appeared on your table and you went to sleep every night in a bed, it didn’t cost you anything to be civilized. But once the food stopped appearing, the laundry stopped being cleaned, the bed you slept in belonged to a stranger, then the niceties might disappear as well. Life, Ella was slowly learning, had a way of showing up mean and hungry.

The next morning, Joe woke both Ella and Frannie as if nothing had happened. “Get up,” he told them from the doorway, and disappeared.

Ella stirred stiffly, face throbbing. She sat up.

Frannie gasped. “Wow, it’s really bad.”

“What do you mean?” Ella said.

Frannie pointed to her cheek, and Ella delicately touched her face, which pulsed as if it had its own heartbeat. In the mirror she saw that her left cheek was black and blue, and her ear had a ring of dried blood in it. She couldn’t imagine how to explain it away. She felt nauseated for a moment.

In the kitchen, Joe sat at the table, waiting to be fed, arms akimbo and legs spread. She didn’t speak—just pulled the pot from the dishrack, poured in the oatmeal and water. The silence lay cold between them like rancid milk.

“You stay home. You clean. You buy food,” he told her.

She wanted to tell him that she and Frannie had already cleaned last night, but she didn’t. She couldn’t believe that he didn’t notice the garbage was gone, the dishes washed, the tables dusted.

“I don’t have any money,” she said instead.

He threw two dimes and a nickel on the kitchen table. Enough for a day or two, no more. “This won’t buy us much,” she said.

“Your mama buy.” He pointed at her. “You buy.”

She was about to say, “No, I’m going to school,” but his face was set. Her cheek prickled with pain. She would stay home, clean. She would go shopping. She’d just miss two days of school: tomorrow was Friday, and she and Charles would be playing hooky to practice their dance steps at his apartment.

She stirred the oatmeal until it was ready, poured it into three bowls, set the bowls on the table. They had no milk or butter, so she laid down a dish of salt the way her mother used to when they had nothing better.

Frannie appeared in the doorway wearing her school clothes. Normally she’d be chattering, complaining about homework, telling them about her friend Maisie and how Maisie wanted to play a trick on Tommy at school. But now Frannie was silent, too.

All three of them ate without speaking.

Joe struggled into his coat and sauntered out. Left his bowl, grimy with a few flattened oatmeal grains, on the table. Next to it, a scum of beige pooled on the table beneath the spoon.

A few minutes later Frannie ran out to meet Maisie and walk with her to middle school.

Ella was alone. She cleaned the breakfast dishes. She mopped the kitchen floor.

Then she went to the living room, pulled out her mother’s records: Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong and, of course, the Boswell Sisters. The record covers were glamorous, suave, elegant—the people on these albums never spilled oatmeal, never wiped clean an ear ringed in dried blood. Some of the covers were dusty, so she pulled out her rag and dusted them front and back. She dropped the first record—“I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)”—on the phonograph.

Feeling defiant—she wouldn’t let Joe boss her around, not her—she played one song after another. When the opening bars of “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You” floated into the air, she closed her eyes, breathing in the music. When the needle reached the center of the phonograph and buzzed into the hiss of static, she listened to that side of the record again. She played it over and over. After the third or fourth time, she started singing along, focusing on every tone and beat, trying to imitate, impersonate, utterly disappear into each of the singers—each breath and each phrase, each tremolo and vibrato. At first it was difficult to sing; her cheek pained her. But the more she sang, the more it loosened up, and the more the world refilled with possibility and hope.

Her mother was gone and her stepfather was proving to be a brute. All Ella wanted to do was dance. But now, right now, this music made everything, for this moment, seem right.

Laundry took most of Ella’s day. Although she’d certainly helped Tempie out, this was the first time she’d done it on her own, with the emptiness of the apartment caving in around her. But she supposed that making things clean was in her blood. She hauled out her mother’s big cast-iron pots, set the water to boil. Before she added the clothes—there were so many—she watched the bubbles materialize on the bottom of the pot, float as if desperate to reach the surface, lift, and then open, the vapor curling like feathers into the air.

She had learned in chemistry about water molecules: heat them and they turn from liquid to gas. But, she wondered, how did the molecules choose which ones would become gas? She imagined a larger, more important molecule in charge, tapping the little water molecules on the shoulder. You shall be air, and you, and you. The molecules in the front row, closest to the heat, were tapped.

Were most deserving.

It’s always easier, looking back from the distance of years, staring down from the penthouse of success, to say, “Of course you should pursue your dreams.” It’s easy enough to say that of course you should try, of course you shouldn’t give up no matter what life throws at you. But when you’re a young colored girl living one step away from the street, when your mother has died, when nobody around you is thriving, is successful, is dreaming big dreams, how do you keep your own dream alive?

When you stare at the other boiling molecules around you, and none of the others is even aware that there is a way out of the steaming pot, how do you keep your eyes fixed upward? All her life she would ponder this. She would do what she could to encourage young voices to reach up, to never yield; but then, right then, with a plantation field of laundry in front of her, her hope of dancing professionally felt doomed.

But she refused to be bedeviled by what appeared impossible. She put Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” on the phonograph, prancing around the kitchen, pretending she was dancing like Cab and repeating his calls: “Hi de hi de hi de hi, ho de ho de ho de ho.”

Into the water went Joe’s shirts and underwear, yellowed and stinking, stains rippling out into the water. She added bleach and soap, and the kitchen hummed with the smell of Tempie’s work, which sweetened the kitchen air. She imagined herself as one of those slinky, long-legged, yellow-toned Cotton Club dancers, and she imagined that rich white men were after her. She grabbed a hair rag from the laundry, wrapped it around her neck, and high kicked. She rinsed and scrubbed, hung out the clothes on the fire escape to freeze and, hopefully, to dry as she re-swept the apartment, dusted the end table in the living room where the Tiffany lamp no longer sat, and organized the empty pantry with the handful of kitchen staples she’d purchased that morning.

Someday she’d be one of those Harlem Greenwich Village loose and gay women, a real flapper. She knew she was a good dancer, athletic and fearless, able to drop into a split and leap into a flip. She would be the water molecule closest to the heat. Under pressure she would rise. She would evaporate, disappear forever from this place.

She practiced the step that was tripping her up on the Lindy Hop (it was toe-ball-heel) and Josephine Baker’s banana dance, rolling her hips around and gyrating her torso. Without Charles to counterbalance her, she whirled too quickly, overcompensated, and fell. A splinter of pain stabbed through her jaw but she ignored it, imagining herself dancing with feathers waving in her hair, holding hands with one of those handsome, smooth-faced Nicholas brothers—or both of them. She’d be in the middle, wearing one of those white lace dresses with the deep bodice, ostrich feathers nodding in a tiara above her head, and she would be standing at the top of a staircase. One brother would hand her off to the other as she descended, the audience expectant, hushed, waiting. She’d tap-dance down, imitating the Nicholas brothers’ suave slides left to right, and then a shimmy to the front of the stage. Everyone would be watching her.

The music made the chores bearable, and soon it would be tomorrow. Soon enough, she and Charles would be earning money dancing, and she’d be helping to contribute to this new household, and Joe would need her and stop doing things to make her despise him.

Hopefully by tomorrow the swelling in her face would go down and her arm wouldn’t hurt. Hopefully by tomorrow the threat of tears behind her eyes would begin to lessen, if only slightly.

By evening, all the piles of laundry were clean and draped around the kitchen and on the lines strung across the fire escape. The apartment sparkled, and dinner was only slightly overcooked macaroni and a very small piece of ham, which she gave to Joe. He sat down and ate, never seeming to look around him, no “thank you” or grunt of acknowledgment. But he didn’t hit her again.

On Friday morning she made breakfast for Joe, Frannie, and herself—scrambled eggs and toast—and left “for school” before Joe headed out for work. She waved to Mrs. Bascombe and Mrs. Hancock, nosy neighbors she was sure were spying on the family now that her mother was gone.

As usual she met Charles on the corner of School Street and Nepperhan Avenue, and they followed the road up the hill to Maple Street and into the warren of side streets. But instead of turning left, into the gates of the high school, they continued straight up the hill and trekked over to Cochran Park. They’d hide out until they were sure that Mrs. Gulliver had left for her hairdressing job, and then they’d let themselves back into Charles’s apartment to practice their dances and laze around for the day.

As they trudged through the slush, Ella was careful to keep her wooly hat pulled low over her eyes, hiding the black-and-blue mark which had brightened into a squeamish yellow. Her left eye was bloodshot from a broken blood vessel. But before they reached the school, Charles caught sight of her face and his eyes went wide. “What happened to you?” he asked, suddenly serious. “Is that why you stayed home? Because you didn’t want anyone to see your face?”

“No,” she said, heart sinking. She’d spent a lot of time examining herself in the mirror, gotten so used to the swelling and bruises that she thought that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she’d first believed. If on the off chance someone did comment, she’d been rehearsing potential stories: should she say she’d run into a door frame, or she’d hit an open kitchen cabinet, or she’d tripped and banged her head on the coffee table?

Charles’s words destroyed those thin hopes. Hearing the awe and sympathy in his voice made tears well up. “I’m okay. Just hit my head.” She turned away, staring down the street, where a bus was letting passengers off.

“Let me look,” Charles said.

“I’m fine,” she repeated.

He held her shoulder, and the momentum of her walk spun her around until she was facing him. “Did Joe do that?”

Tears streaked and burned. She wiped at her good eye but the left one was throbbing. She couldn’t help but nod.

“What’d he do?” Charles said.

“He—” she gulped. “He punched me. He said we was lazy and didn’t clean up like Mama did. He hates me.”

“He never acted like this before, did he?”

She shook him off and started again down the street.

Charles had to jog to keep up. “He can’t treat you like that. He can’t.”

“He can,” she said. “He did.”

“Well—” he paused and she left him behind, so he had to catch up again. “You can’t stay there.”

“Where am I goin’? What am I gonna do?”

“You can stay with us.”

“There’s barely enough for the three of you. Even if I worked it wouldn’t be enough. I couldn’t do that.” She paused, thinking. “Anyway he wouldn’t let me.”

“What you mean?”

The words slipped out of her. “He wants his food on the table and his laundry clean and me sitting there, looking like my mama. He treats me like I’m not even family, just a washerwoman—a—servant. Doing his bidding.”

Charles shook his head. “He hit you real good.”

“I gotta do it, too. You think Frannie would if I left? He might do the same to her. Even if she is his own flesh and blood. He might take it out on her. She’s just a little kid.”

“I dunno,” he said. “But you got to stop crying. We gotta figure this thing out.”

“You shoulda seen him. He turned into a big old white man.” A cold wind tugged at Ella’s hat. “My mama died and I have to live with him,” she said after a minute. “I feel like I don’t know him now.”

They turned the corner into the park. A handful of trees spread cold shadows into the morning. The sun was mercilessly bright.

“You can’t dance tomorrow,” Charles said. On Saturday night they were supposed to perform at the Breakneck Club, about half an hour’s walk away.

“What you mean?”

“I mean you can’t dance looking like that.” He gestured at her face.

“It ain’t that bad.”

“Yeah it is,” he said.

“Well we can practice,” she said fiercely. “We can learn the steps. Let’s go to Harlem tonight and tomorrow night and every night we can. Learn everything. We’ll be boogie-woogie dancing machines.”

She could tell he didn’t want to argue with her while she was in this state. “Okay,” he said. “You can work on your Suzy Q. I told you that was a mess.”

“I’ll work,” she told him. Then she made him promise not to tell anyone what had happened to her. “I tripped,” she said. “That’s it.”

They wandered around the park, staying well within its confines while late stragglers headed to work or to school. They tried to find a solution to living with Joe. The best option seemed to be to move in with Tempie’s sister, Virginia, who lived in Harlem with her daughter. Perhaps her aunt could take Ella and Frannie both—but then Charles would be far away. “I’d come visit,” he said. “We’d still dance.”

She eyed him doubtfully and shrugged.

His breath was two plumes of smoke blowing away in the winter morning. “You ready to head to my house?” he asked. “I think she’s gone.”

“That’s what I’m here for, fool,” Ella said, mimicking a Lindy Hop dancer named Diddley, who was always first in line to get into the Savoy. Even if she couldn’t dance, the prospect of checking out the latest moves that evening lifted her spirits. “Nothin’s gonna stop me.” She exhaled and watched her frosty breath vanish into the sunlight.