Her adolescent sisters went to school while she and her mother went to work. She was comfortably illiterate at eighteen. Darlene had no need to complain about missing out on education but she was funky about missing out on the socialization that came with it. She didn’t have the nerve or permission to speak to her boss, Miss Mailley herself, or the White customers who zipped in and out throughout the day. She only nodded at the other Black maids and nannies who crept in with their minds dead set on getting what they needed and quickly getting back; long errands aroused unwelcome suspicions and accusations. The only excitement she anticipated with near-Pavlovian instinct was every other Friday in back of the store. Inventory days they were called, whenever Miss Mailley’s sons and a gang of carefully selected Black New Africa boys scurried around the back stockrooms to put away goods and items to be sold over the next couple of weeks. In between breaks that sometimes allowed Darlene to try to decipher her younger sisters’ ledgers, she would sneak a peak at the boys out back.

Though the boys proved it was possible to get a job done without ever looking up, Darlene still thought they were tough though they were too scared to look anybody White in the eye. She loved to watch them during quiet moments of rest, when they would lean barefoot against the tight oak logs that made up the store. They would swirl their sweaty feet in the cool dust until their toes disappeared, and the boys themselves appeared as walking ghosts. They pulled their tight suspenders from their chests and spit curse words under their breaths. Sometimes, she would catch one of their pant flies quietly unzipped, not to their knowledge. It was the one they called Tuck who intrigued Darlene the most.