Page 4 of The Killer Cupcake
She glanced over at the traveler next to her. Her name is Willa. A vibrant, beautiful girl with deep ebony brown skin and hair so thick and dense it coiled and had to be worn under a scarf. She’d been sleeping against the train window since the sun disappeared behind the Mississippi pines. Poor Willa. For her, she was escaping the subjugation of the Jensens, only to be used by Kathy as an alibi.
Willa had been orphaned as a child and given to white folks who promised care but delivered servitude to the Jensen family instead. Almost every day since arriving in Butt's, she'd declared to anyone who'd listen—white and black alike—that she was going to find her people and go home someday. The words had become her prayer, her battle cry, her reason for breathing.
They'd become friends the moment Kathy arrived, two girls lost in different ways but finding solace in each other. When Debbie visited for Christmas, Willa grew even more attached to Kathy. Together, a pregnant Debbie and Kathy braided Willa's hair into intricate patterns, dressed her in Kathy's nicest clothes, and spent long evenings talking about the heartbreak that gnawed at them—their boyfriends in New York tangled up in troubles too dark to fully understand, troubles that had deepened after Mrs. Ricci's suicide.
Through the stress-filled months that followed, Willa became Kathy's confidant and co-conspirator. Ely had given up and walked away. Willa was her only friend now. She was the person to help Kathy craft the elaborate deception.
The plan was simple but brilliant. It required Kathy to track down her Aunt Janey. An impossible task she imagined, but she wrote to Boanno and nearly fainted when Janey wrote back. It was the power of the pen.
Kathy then wrote a letter to Willa, one that Willa carried to Mrs. Lottie Jensen with trembling hands and practiced words. The letter spoke of a long-lost sister living in Texas—a sister Willa desperately wanted to visit, if only for a week. She even produced a train ticket, bought with money saved from months of kitchen scraps and mending work. Though Willa was rarely allowed beyond the Jensen property line without permission, they'd always treated her more like family than servant. Kathy suspected that Lottie Jensen genuinely loved the girl, because she did something she wouldn't have done even for Big Mama—she gave her blessing and agreed that Kathy should accompany Willa as a chaperone to ensure her safe return.
Convincing Big Mama after that had been surprisingly easy. Her beloved grandmother respected the Jensen family's judgment, and the idea of Kathy acting as protector for young Willa appealed to her sense of propriety. Even sweeter was the beautiful coincidence neither Big Mama nor Mrs. Jensen questioned: the train to Texas ran straight through New Orleans.
It was destiny. It had to be. After all this time, after all the terrible fragments Debbie had shared about what had happened to Matteo and Carmelo—secrets her sweet, protective boyfriend couldn't or wouldn't burden her with—she was finally going to be with him again.
Happiness bloomed in her chest. This was the beginning of the future the girls whispered about in dark corners and promised each other under Mississippi stars.
She was ready. Lord help her, she was more than ready.
CHAPTER 3
THE TREMÉ
The Illinois Central train released a final, exhausted sighas it yielded to the platform beneath a suffocating blanket of magnolia-scented humidity. Kathy stepped down first, her fingers instinctively lacing through Willa's trembling hand as they emerged into a world that announced its brutality before they'd taken three steps.
"Girl, you’re shaking like a leaf,”Kathy murmured, pressing close.
"I know, I'm sorry. Just... ain't never seen so much of the world all at once,"Willa whispered back, her Mississippi drawl thickening with awe.
Instead of the grand concourse with its marble floors and crystal chandeliers, Kathy had glimpsed through the train windows, they were herded into the "Colored Only" annex—a claustrophobic sweatbox reeking of coal tar, stale urine, and something sharper beneath: the metallic bite of humiliation. A freshly stenciled sign glared above the doorway:"WAITING ROOM FOR NEGROES."
To Kathy—Harlem-raised, then tempered by the long Greyhound ride into the French Quarter—this was expected. The way white porters shoved their luggage at them waslike handling contaminated goods. The way "WHITE" and "COLORED" signs splintered the station like hatchet blows. But behind her, Willa stood paralyzed. Her Sunday dress, painstakingly pressed for this journey, suddenly looked drab against the riot of Black elegance surrounding them: women crowned in emerald and ruby turbans, men in razor-creased suits, all carrying themselves with a defiance that turned segregation into a runway.
"Sweet Jesus, Kathy,"Willa breathed as a white policeman strolled past, his billy clubthock-thockingagainst his thigh like a countdown."Look at these folks.”
Kathy surveyed the unapologetic splendor of colored people around them and grinned. This was the South's best-kept secret—a beauty that Willa's sharecropping life had never shown her.
"You think this is something?" Kathy squeezed her hand."Just wait till you meet Aunt Janey."
As if summoned, the crowd suddenly parted like the Red Sea.
A woman materialized from the sweat-shimmered air, dressed head to toe in blinding white. Elbow-length silk gloves. A pillbox hat with French lace veiling her face, now etched in spiderweb shadows across cheekbones, sharp, lips, ruby red. She moved through the "Colored" section with the serene dominion of a queen, ignoring a peasant revolt—utterly indifferent to the glares from white travelers and the hissed, indrawn breaths from the women of color.
"Janey Boanno," Kathy chuckled to herself now that she knew her aunt really was. “Look, Willa, that’s my aunt, my Ma’s baby sister. The baby of the family of girls.”
Janey swept forward with arms extended, and Kathy dropped Willa’s hand. She rushed into her aunt’s warm embrace. Janey pressed her lips to each of Kathy's cheeks in the Continental fashion of a cultured lady. Her perfume—an intoxicating blend of jasmine and vanilla—completely obliterated the station's oppressive stench.
"Ma petite chérie! You made it safely," Janey purred in that voice like aged wisdom, then turned her golden, cat-like gaze to Willa. "And here she is. The brave little one who helped us spread the lie?”
“Aunt Janey!” Kathy gasped.
Willa’s eyes stretched, like a scared cat.
Janey let out a peal of laughter that made the heads of both black and white men turn. “Oh, I’m just kiddin’ suga.Bienvenue à laNouvelle-Orléans, my darling."
Willa's mouth fell open as her eyes scanned Janey’s bold confidence. Kathy knew what Willa was thinking. Janey's skin was the color of milk with a touch of honey, her eyes flecked with gold were sharp with intelligence—a woman who could have easily passed for white in any Northern city if she hid from the sun, but who chose to stand here, magnificent and uncompromising, in this segregated area.
With a sharp snap of her gloved fingers, Janey summoned a tall Black chauffeur who materialized as if from thin air, efficiently loading their modest luggage onto a gleaming brass cart. "This way,mes beautés. Alphonse has the Caddy waiting."
