Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Lillian leaves the Back Porch and hears a rap song that she recognizes coming from a passing car. Rap, she says, strikes her as a “joyful mastery of language” (59), and it troubles her that she has so few acquaintances left in the city with whom she can discuss such things. In her youth, the best new things were jazz and the Lindy Hop, created in Harlem and later appropriated by the mainstream. She thinks this is the natural order of things, as creativity exists on the margins but the middle is where the money is. She knows, having been part of it.

She takes a detour past the Christian Women’s Hotel where she lived when she first moved to the city in 1926, noting its decay.

Lillian lives in the Christian Women’s Hotel in 1926; she and Helen arrive and move in on the same day. They take classes at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and put on plays at the boardinghouse to make extra money to get an apartment. They are putting on Antigone with Lillian in the title role. She notes that each girl has been typecast, with their fellow boarder Ginny in the role of Creon because she always obeys the rules “even if the rules were stupid” (68).