I didn’t just not know how to take care of my hair; I had grown to hate it. I felt antagonized by its texture and unavoidable otherness. It wouldn’t stay or hold or shine or fall. I couldn’t tuck it behind my ears like all the white girls in school did with their straight, shiny hair, or casually flip it over my shoulder, run my fingers through it, or brush it out of my eyes.
Tess and I brought a picture of the black actress Shari Belafonte we’d torn out of a magazine to use as an example of the look we were going for. Belafonte, the daughter of iconic actor Harry Belafonte, had successfully transitioned from modeling to acting in the ’80s and was known for her short, crop-cut afro.
In the sleek styling chair across from a mirror that ran the length of the wall, surrounded by track lights and pop music, I watched the stylist as she wielded a pair of cutting shears to lop off my hair, leaving clumps of frizz on the floor. I felt a minute of regret, and also of guilt, as if I was disrespecting all the work that Ida had done, the distinct and particular care she had taken years before, when no one else in my life did or could. Mom had met us there, because it was a very big deal, and also, she had been visiting with her parents, my grandparents, and would drive us home after my haircut.
I watched Mom in the mirror as she stood next to me sitting in the stylist’s chair. “It’s so beautiful, Beck,” she said, almost mournfully. “So soft-looking. Maybe you should leave it at that length.”
We were about midway through the cut, my hair about the length it was when I still wore it as a big, free afro when I was little. Mom turned to Tess, who was seated in the waiting area with a mirage of distance. “Don’t you think it’s just gorgeous at this length, Tess?”
Tess shrugged her shoulders. “I think it will look more chic when it’s real short,” she said, looking at me instead of Mom. “Don’t you think, Rebecca?”
I nodded.
“Hold still,” the perky stylist said.
* * *
Over the phone when I’d gotten back to Warner after my hair cut, Tess expressed her concern over the way she thought Mom had romanticized my hair.
“It’s just hair, Rebecca. Your mother, and your father, too, see you as this exotic being,” Tess said, again, in part of a mini-lecture that had become routine. “You’re not any more special than any other kid,” she said. “You’ve said that they remind you, far too often in my opinion, of how beautiful you are, but do they care about your education? Have they put any money aside for you to attend college?”
I tried to explain to Tess that they were artists, and we very rarely, if ever, talked about things like education or college savings. We didn’t even have health insurance.
“But you do talk to them about their love affairs, right?”
Yes, I told her, especially with Dad, because we were close; he confided in me.
“Frankly, I think you’re too close with your father,” she said. “And your mother is hobbled by her husband.”
If Tess thought Mom was hobbled by Dad, Mom thought Tess hated men. Tess was independent and opinionated, strident even; she had a job that she went to every day; she could take or leave a partner, while Mom couldn’t imagine her life without Dad and deferred to him on almost everything. She rarely espoused serious, forthright opinions on anything outside of the house, and she’d never held a regular job, which Tess often brought up.
“Your mother has never had to work for a living, and that’s why she follows the lead of your father. She has no character of her own. Working builds character,” Tess said, during another phone conversation.
“All Dad cares about is Catherine anyway,” I said, glumly.
Dad and Catherine had started to collaborate as creative partners by illustrating the pottery Catherine’s husband threw, and were regularly touring the New England craft show circuit together.
“I wish I was with you, I hate it here,” I said. When I wasn’t at school, I was often home alone, and I’d started to feel extremely lonely and stuck, parented mostly by the TV and occasional, distant, and not-quite-maternal missives from Tess over the phone. Warner had begun to seem limited in the extreme, and I longed more and more to be near Tess, and the livelier small-city setting of Portsmouth.
“Well, try not to hate it, Rebecca. But I wish you were here, too,” Tess said.
* * *
I’d never heard her say this before, and it marked an enormous shift in our relationship. I felt like a different person when I was with Tess, when we spoke on the phone, and it finally felt like being the daughter of her making was within reach. I could mimic the sound of her voice, echo her opinions, side with her against my parents, laugh like her, dress like her, smoke cigarettes in the attic—Merit Ultra Lights, the same brand that Tess smoked.
I folded into the mere sound of Tess’s voice, dizzying, liquid, and lethal like freebase cocaine shimmering in its heated spoon. It was an electric sensation, not like the safe, smooth feeling of Mom’s love, and I chose it outright.
Telling Tess that I hated being in Warner was the crack that she needed in what she perceived as the veneer of the happy, special adopted child, and her tenor changed almost overnight. We became inseparable, finishing each other’s sentences, creating an invisible and impenetrable protectiveness around us at all times when we were together. Our relationship took up acres of space, giant swaths of air that moved at the pace of a tornado, in the eye of which we twirled around together like tireless, unbowed dance partners.
I surrendered to Tess as if doing so would somehow lift or reverse her surrender of me when I was a baby. She was hard on me, but she was also funny and charismatic and brilliant. From her I learned concepts and phrases like “power differential” and “situational ethics” and “full dance card” and “self-awareness” and “chances are slim and none, and Slim just took off.” Erudite expressions like “glib repartee” and “modus operandi” and “fait accompli” and “bon mot.”
* * *
“Have you thought about what you might like to do with your life?” Tess asked, one morning, while we sat on the couch in her living room, with bottles of Poland Spring water.
“I feel like, maybe an actress?” I said, smiling, because I felt both serious and not serious about it, and also because I knew Tess would have a strong opinion about it either way.
“Do you want to be an actress, Rebecca, or do you want to be famous?” Tess said, raising her eyebrows like she did when she wanted me to know I’d slipped.
I sat with that for a minute.
“I mean, they’re kind of the same thing, right?”
“No, Rebecca,” she said, and I could hear the exasperation that used to regularly show up in her voice, that I hadn’t heard in months, maybe even a year.
“Listen, Miss Rebecca.” Tess’s “black” affect meant I wasn’t going to hear this from anyone else, so I’d better stay focused. “Aspiring for that kind of attention is fucked up. Something is real wrong with you if that’s what you want or feel like you need.”
“You’re right,” I said. “That was dumb. Just kidding!”
And then we laughed about the idea, but it felt like we were laughing at me.
* * *
We had both adored and devoured popular culture long before we met, and watching the Oscars together either over the phone or in person became a celebrated annual tradition. We loved all awards shows, including the Emmys and the Grammys, during which Tess never missed an opportunity to comment on the acceptance speeches of winning black artists: “They loooooove to thank Jesus!” But the Oscars were special.
We indulged in all manner of chocolate, and talked nonstop about the hairstyles and gowns, who looked like what and was clearly dating whom, who gave the best performances, because we’d always seen all the movies nominated, who should win what and the spectacle of it all, event television at its finest. We were petty and catty and judgy in the pre–Gawker, Borowitz Report ’80s, before the popularization of highbrow critical snark. Sometimes we’d perfor
m our commentary throughout the whole broadcast in our Valley girl accents, which we started to affect after seeing the movie starring Nicolas Cage.
Tess read People magazine religiously, and I followed suit. We interpreted the meaning of songs as inside jokes, honing our sarcasm in lockstep. “What do you think they mean when they say ‘push it’?” Tess said, of Salt-N-Pepa’s hit 1986 anthem. “Maybe, like, a grocery cart?” I’d respond, feigning obliviousness, as if we were doing a stand-up comedy bit.
We watched Richard Gere movies until our eyes went cross, and obsessed over the sex scene between Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward in Against All Odds, hot and dark and breathless in the ruins of Cozumel, Mexico. We packed up trashy magazines, quart-sized Poland Spring seltzers, low-SPF bottles of sunscreen or none at all, and two beach chairs to settle in for full days at the beach to keep up “tan maintenance,” as Tess called it. I felt closer to her when I bronzed up into a nice nut brown instead of wintertime’s sallow light-skinned black.
Tess’s favorite Stevie Wonder song was “Golden Lady,” with “Knocks Me Off My Feet” a close second, and maybe tied with second “Ribbon in the Sky.” That was our song. She knew exactly what she would and wouldn’t do, and had the most resonant laugh I’d ever heard, a trill of radical self-possession, clipped girlhood, and feral, territorial bliss. She was a self-declared feminist, a term or thing I didn’t even know existed before we met, and the only adult in my life who pointed out that what was happening in the 1984 cult classic Purple Rain was domestic violence, between the parents of Prince’s character, the Kid, and between the Kid and Apollonia. Leah and I had only been obsessing previously, like everyone else, over how thrillingly sexy and dangerous Prince’s performance was in the film, which we watched on VCR when it came to video.
When Tess’s light shone on me, it was hypnotizing. You look young, bright, strong… as if you are awakening to something of which you are (will be) in total possession. Could this be your SELF? I don’t know. But you hum with hope, she wrote in a letter to me. I felt like I was humming with hope—her hope in me.
It was a love affair of the highest order, an unsupervised joyride into the depths of what could have been, me back into the womb, bathed in her mercurial amniotic fluid, imagining that she might rub her belly with pride, no longer pretending I wasn’t there as she had the first time. She would push and strain in labor and keep me this time, forever.
Nineteen
As I watched the boys pop and lock, it reminded me of that sixth grade assembly years before, when the black break-dancer had looked at me longingly before I turned away from him. This group of dancers—the Apple Jam Crew—was performing at Prescott Park in Portsmouth on a summer day when I was fifteen years old. This time, I knew I would not turn away. They spun and dipped their bodies with such mesmerizing joy, it felt like I was experiencing the feeling of desire for the first time. My long, unrequited crush on Ryan was certainly about a physical attraction—I definitely wanted to kiss him, a lot—but I had never felt this kind of visceral longing before.
Tess and my brothers sat on the grass nearby, allowing me this moment alone, as I stood out front among the rest of the audience. One boy with a baby face and oval brown eyes smiled at me, and I smiled back. We locked eyes, and after the performance I stayed behind as others wandered off with their small children—some you could tell were tourists, others just locals spending some time at the park, taking in the glorious public gardens with its red and gold and purple flowers in seasonal glow.
He walked toward me, sly and cocksure, while the other boys folded up their cardboard and packed up their gear. The boom box was still playing, and kids of various ages who had gathered to watch kept moving to the beat, twirling and shaking their little hips, trying to spin on their backs, impeded by the grass.
“You go to the Speakeasy?” he asked, before even saying hello.
“What?” I said.
“My name’s Doug, but my crew name’s Ice Cube—my boys call me Cube.” This was pre–N.W.A, pre–famous rapper Ice Cube.
“Oh, hey. I’m Rebecca,” I said, eager to hear him say something else.
“Cool, cool. Rebecca. OK.”
As soon as I heard Cube speak, I wondered for the first time what my birth father’s voice might sound like. How would it sound to hear him say my name? Would he have the same cadence as Cube? Was my birth father’s manner of speaking fluid or halting? Was his meter casual or pointed, separated by quiet pauses or sprinkled throughout with “ums” or “you knows”? Would it sound black like Cube’s or black like mine? Was my voice even black? There was no one who modeled a black male voice in my immediate life, no black male sound that spoke to me with warm affection, a familial melody. Until now.
“What’s the Speakeasy?”
Cube explained it was a nearby dance club that held an under-twenties night every Wednesday and Sunday. I felt a thrilling wave of relief. Dance was a language I felt fluent in, a vernacular I could rely on. I got this, I thought. Cube and I said goodbye, and I found Tess, brimming with excitement. I told her about this place called Speakeasy and asked her if she would take me the next Sunday.
“We’ll have to find a sitter for the boys, but I think we can figure something out.” Tess gave me a look of encouragement and shared excitement.
* * *
When Sunday arrived, Tess helped me pick out what to wear, something white and billowy made out of nylon parachute material. She let me use her powder blush that came in a small brick red earthen pot, and was applied with a squat brush with a round wooden handle. Just a touch on the cheekbones, a bit of mascara and gloss.
In the kitchen of her apartment I leaned against the sink, visibly nervous. The boys had gone to bed, and a friend would come over to stay with them as they slept so that Tess could drive us to the Speakeasy. I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, and there were no cell phones, no internet, no Ubers or Lyfts back then. The thought of my taking a cab by myself would have been ridiculous, in terms of both cost and safety.
“Here,” Tess said, reaching up above the sink behind me to pull a bottle of Grand Marnier out of the cupboard. “Have a shot of this, it will calm your nerves.” The only other time I’d tasted hard liquor was when Dad gave me a tiny sip of his special Italian liqueur, Galliano, which was a syrupy bright yellow and tasted of licorice.
The Grand Marnier felt hot and sharp going down my throat, but then smoothed out, and my arms loosened their grip across my chest. I felt relaxed on the car ride over, the tight curls of my newly shorn crop cut slick, doused with some hair product that the white women at 210 had given me—packaged differently and far more expensive than the slim brown pump bottle of Sta-Sof-Fro Ida had given me years before.
The Speakeasy was a former roller-skating rink in Portsmouth, about a twenty-minute drive from Tess’s apartment, and the under-twenties night started at eight o’clock, just as it began to get dark in the summertime. A line of young people, almost entirely black, spilled from the entrance into the mostly vacant parking lot. I felt both unnerved and beckoned by it. A few white girls with long nails and bright blue eye shadow stood out, hands on their hips, pushing out their bottoms to add curves where there were none.
Tess and I joined the line, the two of us an odd pairing, though at thirty-two, Tess still could have easily passed for early twenties. There were no other such pairings; the few white girls stood together, and the rest, a swath of blackness, vibrated with the natural energy of freedom.
Inside, Tess fell back and sat at one of the small tables at the front, where she watched from afar, smoking and nursing a seltzer. She’d offered to stay, and I’d said OK, because I wanted her to see that I could handle myself with a boy who had shown an interest in me. I wasn’t the passive eleven-year-old at the bar who didn’t know how to fend off the advances of a sleazy older man anymore.
The dance floor was dark and pulsating with colorful strobes, while bass-heavy music rippled across the floor and ricocheted off the c
eiling. It felt like heaven, and I was so immediately caught up in the ease and pleasure of it that it took half the night before I realized how out of my league I was when it came to dancing. Everyone else was flexing moves like the Running Man and the Cabbage Patch, and I was just moving to the music like I always had, while also looking around to see if I could spot Cube.
I danced alone, wondering if Cube was going to show up, before I realized that everyone else was dancing together, in small groups or in twos, syncing their moves and bumping their hips, arms raised, hands in the air, a kind of community and kinship I’d never seen or felt among my white peers back at high school. I went from surfing this wave of bliss to drowning in discontent, and started to think that maybe we should leave when Cube and his boys from the Apple Jam Crew took to the floor. It was exciting to see them arrive as a group, serious and intent, like an all-star team showing up to the court for a big game.
Soon they were joined by another break-dancing group, who wore their name, the Poppin’ Express, on black T-shirts with bright red letters. I felt euphoric, as a spotlight splashed on from above and the boys started their dance-off, a battle of locks and freezes and backspins.
The leader of the Poppin’ Express was about my age and dangerously beautiful. Tall and muscular, with dark skin and kingly eyes, he had a cool, seamless, measured style of dancing. He exuded confidence, and I actually ached watching him move. I watched him all night, standing as close as I could get in the circle surrounding their dance-off, wondering who he was.
Surviving the White Gaze Page 9
