by J. J. Murray
Grandpa lost his boats and his livelihood that day and later lost his mind from the grief—and the whiskey—leaving my father homeless at thirteen. And yet my father never cursed the sea that changed his life forever. He instead served in the U.S. Navy and sailed Long Island Sound every weekend of my life, even though he had lost most of the sight in his right eye by 1986. He could never get enough of the sea, even if he couldn’t see it. “There’s much to be learned from the sea,” he’d tell me. “When you’re sailing the blood of a giant, you never know which way he’ll bleed.”
And now we’re in the same boat, I think to myself as the ferry docks near green-gray weeds swaying along the slimy shore of Fire Island. I’ve got no home, no real livelihood, no father, no one even to call me anything.
I take Bayview Walk past some fantastic white multi-windowed houses facing Great South Bay, all of them built low to the ground as if they, too, are crouching on the shore in fear of a storm. Enveloped in the lonely half light, trees leaning over courtyards to provide pockets of shade, I pass through the empty streets of Cherry Grove until I reach Green Walk, where I nearly collide with a blond woman walking three dogs, each more hideous than the one before: a black-and-brown bull mastiff, its jowls dripping, its breath pestilential; a white toy poodle, coiffed like a diva and yipping like one, too, its tail a white microphone high in the air; and a Basset hound, its eyes huge and weepy, its head as big as the rest of its body, only its thumping tail longer. Their leashes tangle around my legs as the mastiff searches my coat pockets for the honey bun.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman says, pulling back only the poodle and Basset hound. The mastiff works its nose deeper into my left pocket. “Regina must smell food.”
No kidding. I ease Regina’s nose out of my pocket and withdraw the slippery carcass of my honey bun, peeling back the plastic and offering it to Regina. A millisecond later, the honey bun is gone, plastic and all. I count four fingers and a thumb and smile.
“Regina’s really a sweet dog.”
Right. “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for Henry Milton’s place on Green Walk.”
She points to a gate across the street. “That’s Henry’s place. Are you a new friend of his?”
I extend a Regina-spittled hand. “Uh, yeah, I guess. I’m one of his writers, Peter Underhill.”
She leaves my hand hanging, lifting the leashes by way of explanation. I wouldn’t have shaken my hand either. “I’m Sibyl, dog-walker extraordinaire.”
“Nice to meet you, Sibyl.” Regina growls. I bet the plastic didn’t go down too well. Regina will be blowing bubbles out her ass later. “And you, too, Regina.”
“See you around,” Sibyl says as she breezes away, her blond hair bouncing in the wind.
I open the gate and find myself in a sunny courtyard with surprisingly green grass and a grove of laurels, whitewashed benches and outdoor couches spaced here and there around a small, empty in-ground pool. I hear a voice singing to a guitar and smell the oregano beginnings of an Italian or Greek feast. As I shut the gate, the wind dies down, and some amber accent lights begin to glow along the path. I’m almost to some stairs when I notice a man watching me from the roof high above.
“What are you—prophet, priest, or inventor?” he asks, his voice rising and falling like a seasoned poet. I count the syllables in my head—ten exactly. This must be the poet Henry was telling me about.
“Writer,” I call up to him.
He rolls his eyes. “You must be one of Henry’s many friends.”
I move up the stairs, smiling at him while once again counting his syllables. Ten again. Normal people do not speak in blank verse.
At the top, I find myself on a patio with a brilliant view of Great South Bay. “You must be a poet,” I tell him. “Do you always speak in blank verse?”
“Alas, it is one of the dying arts,” he says. He wears a white headband, loose green sweatpants, and an oversized white New York Jets jersey. He is also as tan as burnt toast, lines of white skin leaking out in squint lines around his eyes. “Welcome, Henry’s friend, to Elysium.”
“Peter Underhill.”
He nods. “You can call me the Poet, Coleman Muse.”
“Nice to meet you, Coleman.”
“Let me give you a tour of Cherry Grove,” he says, still speaking in blank verse. Coleman must be no fun at parties. “Over there’s where people drink to forget.” I see a pub or bar named Le Lethe. “Yonder lies the Great South Bay, shimmering.”
“Do you live here year-round?”
“No, because none of us has a fixed home.”
He’s good at making up blank verse, but this is getting creepy. I look to the south and see the waves of the Atlantic tapping the shore. “How’s the weather been?”
Coleman pauses a beat, probably to count his syllables. “Calm, cool, and serene, and Cherry Grove sleeps.”
Spooky, strange, and weird is this Coleman Muse. Geez, now I’m thinking in blank verse. “Uh, where’s Henry’s place?”
“I will show you if you will follow me.”
I don’t speak to Coleman on the way to Henry’s door for fear of another ten-syllable blast. I wonder if there’s therapy available for recovering blank verse addicts. He stops in front of a white door facing Great South Bay. “This, Henry’s friend, is Henry’s bright white door, and if you like we can parley some more.”
Now he’s speaking in couplets. I thank him, open the door, and see—Geez, I have died and gone to a blizzard in Alaska.
Henry’s studio apartment is bright white and all the same eye-blinding bright white. Henry could have had the decency to at least do his moldings and baseboards in antique white. I might get lost in here! White indoor-outdoor carpet. I didn’t know they made such an irrational thing. A white sofa, a white coffee table in front, a white library table behind. White curtains and shades, pulled down, of course, to keep all the other colors safely outside. A white bookcase filled with white seashells and unpainted Hummel figurines. A framed copy of the Beatles’ White Album. How tacky. A white dinner table with two matching wing chairs. A white kitchen counter and appliances, cabinets filled with opaque white glasses and fine china, drawers filled with white utensils.
I rip open the refrigerator and—Here’s some color. Lots of beer, soda, condiments, salad fixings. His pantry has color, too, each shelf covered meticulously with white contact paper and teeming with boxed goodies of every flavor of the rainbow. I search through the house for anything else visibly nonwhite and come up empty. Even Henry’s soap, soap dish, and shower fixtures are white.
I have entered a rubber room on the funny farm. I am in a snowstorm in Buffalo. I am buried under the surface of the moon. I will have to leave all the windows and the refrigerator and pantry doors open at all times or I will go blind. I cannot be Ebony Mills in a completely Caucasian apartment.
After moving the dinner table to a window looking out on Great South Bay, I set up shop. I boot up the laptop, which is gloriously black with glowing green lights, then litter the table with stacks of research notes and outlines. I make a cup of dark brown Earl Grey tea, using brown sugar to sweeten it. I slide Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life into the laptop’s CD tray, “Love’s in Need of a Love Today” breaking the silence. I am tired, but I am ready to write. I look at my working outline for Chapter 1 of my novel:
I. Back story: history of the Underhills
II. Back story: David and “Hel” Underhill
III. Back story: 1963–1975 (life with the Captain and “Hel”)
I sift through my notes on my family history, my fingers eager to begin my dissection of the hallowed Underhills, but nothing comes.
Nothing.
I start on the back story for my father three times, but I fail to grasp his essence, his character, typing then deleting “The Captain was a” three times.
Maybe it’s the light salt breezes blowing off the bay that I’m allowing inside to spoil Henry’s antiseptic apartment, may
be it’s the long day with the flight, the drive, and the ferry ride, maybe it’s me singing along with Stevie Wonder instead of writing, maybe it’s the fact that Henry’s apartment is one huge blank page haunted by a blank verse poet doing iambic pentameter jumping jacks on the roof above—
I can’t write tonight. I can’t latch on to any of the winged dreams and nightmares swooping through my mind. Edie, who had a classical private school education, used to call me the Fisher King whenever I had writer’s block. “You’re as impotent as the Fisher King,” she’d tell me. “But I guard the Holy Grail,” I’d reply.
I am the Fisher King. Again. It seems fitting here as I look out over the calm waters of Great South Bay.
But when I curl up on the couch and think of Ebony and how fine she would look in Henry’s apartment, how her dark skin would blaze shadows on to these too-white walls, I smile.
Good night, Ebony, wherever you are. I’ll write about you tomorrow.
Promise.
3
I wake up several hours later in complete darkness, sweat dripping down my back. I can’t be sleeping! I have two novels to write, and Henry wants his sassy-ass novel as soon as possible.
I scratch the sleep out of my eyes and boot up the laptop, searching old files for five years of the fits and starts of Desiree’s other novels. There are a lot of starts, but few fits for what Henry wants. But after a few hits of brown-sugared Earl Grey tea, Stevie Wonder turned up as loud as the laptop’s little speakers can handle, I start to click the keys…
…as a black woman.
A WHITER SHADE OF PALE by Desiree Holland
Prologue
I’m looking for The One on a search for the Holy Male.
I know it’s supposed to be the Holy Grail, but a man sure as hell isn’t a communion cup, although sometimes a whole bunch of whine is involved.
I’m on a quest to find my soul mate before he finds me. I mean, what kind of a romance would it be if the hero rides in on his sweaty yet majestic white horse—and it has to be a white horse, because those fantasy stories are always racist—to save me, the damsel in distress, whose hair is micro-braided and beaded and looking beyond fo-ine, only I have already kicked the dragon’s ass, sliced and diced his scaly green guts, stuffed banquet-sized dragon morsels into medieval freezer bags, and have been waiting for our hero for twenty goddamn minutes? I would not be amused by his tardiness, and I would probably be tapping the sand on my wrist-hourglass and yawning when I see our hero limping in from his death-defying battle with an arthritic squirrel.
“It’s about time you showed up, Sir Stankalot,” I would say. “Now wipe that dragon shit off my sword, put these groceries on your Caucasian horse, and let’s get us back to Camelot. You know there’ll be a party waiting for us, because that’s all those crazy white knights do. That Merlin is a wiz in the kitchen with dragon spleen, isn’t he? I hope he separates out the membrane this time, though. Cleaning dragon spleen is a lost art. And that King Arthur, he’s such a trip at parties. I hope Lancelot has the sense to keep his hands off Guenevere’s ass this time…”
A quest just wouldn’t be any fun if he found me first.
I sit back in my chair and smile. Ebony loved those old medieval romances, but I was never quite the right knight.
I see the skies getting rosier, the darkness rolling the stars away from the surface of the bay. “Now, for a little back story.” I finish my tea, the last gulp ninety percent brown sugar.
Chapter 1
I’m nobody’s damsel in distress, mainly because I shop at Wal-Mart. I’m no fashion queen, and Wal-Mart always has my size, even if I sometimes have to sneak into the plus-size section to get a blouse.
They sell a little bit of everything at Wal-Mart, but they don’t sell dragon-slicing knives. I doubt any of those malls sell them, either. I don’t like shopping at those malls, no sir. I get claustrophobic even on the escalators at malls. And on elevators, I’m the crazy lady who sweats, whistles, and stands with her hands on the crack of the doors. I’ve never ridden a horse and wouldn’t know how to swing a sword to save my life. I can barely shave my legs with an electric razor without getting a nasty burn.
I feel my own scraggly growth. I don’t intend to shave until I’m through with these novels. Call it superstition. Edie hated my attempts at growing a beard, but Ebony liked my little moustache, that first soft growth I had when I was thirteen. Most of it sprouted out of a mole under my nose, but Ebony said that it made me look “so much older.”
And all those parties at Camelot aren’t for me either. I would rather discover, search, and hang with myself or with only one other person. I’m my own best friend.
I sometimes take long walks just to browse in old bookstores. “What are you looking for?” they sometimes ask. “Everything in particular,” I tell them. “I’m looking for a diamond in the rough.”
Then they smile and say, “I’ll check the computer for that title.”
When they bring me a book or say they’ll have to order one or more of the nine romance novels (and one illustrated history of Arizona) titled A Diamond in the Rough or Diamond in the Rough, I shake my head. “I’m sure you have the particular diamond in the rough I’m searching for,” I tell them. “I’ll keep looking.”
They generally leave me alone after that, but they always shadow me, sometimes with a security guard, which doesn’t upset me a bit. You can never be too careful browsing bookstores these days. I mean, you might innocently brush up against a Salman Rushdie book and become a target of someone’s jihad.
Browsing. That’s all Ebony and I ever did, it seems. We’d browse every store in Huntington Bay Village, trying on clothes our parents would never buy, reading magazines and comic books our parents would never allow in the house.
I make another cup of Earl Grey and try to think of what Ebony would be looking for in a soul mate. I used to know, because I was supposed to be her soul mate.
I should have never left Long Island.
Returning to my laptop, I let a little of my own character into Ebony’s character:
So what exactly am I looking for? If I knew that, I’d have found his ass already. I just don’t know.
I once saw a woman on TV who was sitting in the charred wreckage of her house after a fire. A rude reporter shoved a microphone in her face, asking, “What are you doing?” I would have said, “What’s it look like, you asshole?” but the woman on the TV never spoke. She just kept sifting through the gunk on the floor until she found one of those old Polaroid pictures, the kind you had to pull out of the camera and time for a minute. She held that picture to her chest and smiled, sooty tears running down her face.
And that’s what romance is to me: It’s like looking for that one unburnt picture in the ashes. There’s nothing to it but to do it. I just have to search high and low and in between and in between that until…I find The One who has survived the fire.
And I’ve only been searching for—give or take—thirty years.
I want a man, but not just any man. He has to meet certain criteria. Or rather, he has to accept certain things about me and not dog me out about every damn thing that I do or don’t do.
He can’t mind if I do most if not all of the cooking. I can cook, and if you ever saw me, you’d say, “She has a gland problem or she still lives at home and eats her mama’s cooking.” I don’t have a gland problem that I know of, and I haven’t lived at home for fifteen years. I’m not out-and-out flabby, but I do have a roll or two on my tummy from my made-from-scratch dinner rolls. I doubt I’d fit into any of those height-weight charts at the doctor’s office, but I haven’t met many black people who actually do. Bet there wasn’t a black doctor on that panel when they made those charts.
When I cook, I don’t use recipes or instructions. I kind of go with the flow…and whatever happens to be in the pantry or fridge. I have an extensive spice collection that even includes
…includes what? Edie did all the cooking for us, most of it
unpronounceable and generally inedible, and I had the “honor” of being her dishwasher afterward. The only herbs I know come from that “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme” song by Simon and Garfunkel. I stretch my back after standing and check out Henry’s pantry.
I blink at a couple hundred different spices. Why so many spices in a summer home? And what the hell is fenugreek? It looks like a collection of smashed peanuts and smells strangely like nutty, homemade cookies. Marjoram smells almost like Earl Grey tea, but it looks like peat moss. Coriander, which either resembles rat droppings or brown caviar, smells like green tea or warm, stale Guinness Stout. Savory, which has to be mint tea, looks like a mix of pine needles and hedge trimmings. I look closely at basil and see an apostrophe s. I open and smell some outstanding herb, which must be Basil’s stash. Henry needs some help. If I were a cop looking for marijuana, the first place I’d look would be the herb collection. I’ve heard of far too many people busted because the oregano wasn’t oregano.
Ebony wouldn’t use any of this shit. I slide bottles here and there until I see several different types of Jamaican curry powder. I race back to the laptop and type:
seven different types of Jamaican curry powder. Name another woman who has seven different types of Jamaican curry powder in her pantry. I blow people away at
Now where will she work this time? Ebony was Toni Million, an aspiring dancer working at a fancy restaurant in Ashy, and Bonita Milton, an unknown artist working at a daycare center in The Devil to Pay. It has to be a job where the reader will have some instant sympathy. I smile. She’s going to be what I used to be: a teacher.
