Third Girl from the Left

by Martha Southgate

  “Back to Tulsa?”

  “Where else she gonna go?” Sheila picked up her cigarette, took a drag, narrowed her eyes. Rafe thought it might be to keep from crying.

  “Why’d she leave? Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you?”

  “Like you said, you ain’t been around. I . . . I wanted her to stay, but I ain’t even working enough to keep myself fed hardly. And she eating for two.” A bark of a laugh. “She’ll be all right. Her mama and daddy took her back in.”

  His ears were ringing. Gone. She was gone. “Well . . . well . . .” He trailed off, took a drag of his cigarette.

  “You mattered to her, you know,” Sheila said after a time. “You know that, right?”

  He nodded. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, girlish sobs would escape. Faggy. None of that. Not in front of her. Sheila took another drag, got up, walked to the window. “I miss her too. I miss her a lot,” she said.

  Now he could speak. He could offer her that. “I know. I know you do.” They sat in silence, separate, smoking their cigarettes, as the city aged all around them, as the work they were permitted to do faded away, as they realized nothing lasts forever. It was 1975, and everything was about to change. It was just as well. They were awfully tired.

  12

  AFTER A FEW WEEKS, ANGELA BEGAN TO SEE that sticking close to home was the best course. She couldn’t walk downtown without engendering comments both whispered and audible. She felt like a freak rather than a lovely LA girl in her big ’fro. And her bright dresses and platform shoes, which she kept to even as they hurt her feet and got harder and harder to put on, well, nobody dressed quite like that here either. She could see the high school girls looking at her with wonder and envy, and some fashiony types (her mama called them “fast”) wore dime store versions of her clothing. But she stood out, pregnant, alone, lonely.

  They ate meals together. The clinking of silverware on plates often made the only sound. Silence seemed to have completely overtaken her mother. Sometimes her father chatted, in a general way, to both of them, about events at the store, signs of life in the Greenwood section, which had been nearly abandoned throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. But he never looked at Angela’s face. His drugstore, which he’d been running for nearly thirty years, was one of the few old businesses standing. When she went in to pick up something for her mother, she sometimes saw customers who’d known her as a girl. The women’s eyes slid slowly across her; she didn’t exist. The men stared frankly and briefly, usually at her glorious hair or her breasts, despite her pregnancy. Then they’d look away, afraid Johnny Lee would see what they were thinking. After a while, she stopped going down to the drugstore unless her mother absolutely insisted, which she rarely did.

  Angela was about eight months along and had been home for two months when she finally said it. Another silent dinner had almost ended when the words jumped out of her: “Why won’t you talk to me?” She addressed both parents, but primarily her father, who probably hadn’t spoken to her directly more than five times since her homecoming.

  Johnny Lee looked up, his dark face stern and comprehending, “What you mean, gal?”

  “I mean y’all took me in, but you been treating me like . . . like one of those gals you all talk so bad about. I mean I came back to this godforsaken, boring-ass town with nowhere else to go and y’all treat me like trash.” She stopped. A sudden memory of standing next to Sheila that long ago day on Venice Beach stole her breath. This wasn’t home. Why had she left her home? Her parents looked at her like figures in a painting, their silverware suspended over their plates.

  “Like trash, huh?” said Johnny Lee. “I see you eatin’ our food, sleepin’ under our roof, ’bout to have a baby with no man in sight after doing God knows what all in that city you been living in. And you upset we treatin’ you like trash.” He paused. “Girl, you gettin’ better than you deserve.” He went back to his meal.

  Angela was on her feet before she knew it. Her mother looked at her, her fork frozen halfway to her lips. She ran upstairs, her mother’s steps behind her.

  She lay on her side in her old bed, sobbing. Her mother entered hesitantly. “Angie.”

  Angela’s only answer was another ragged sob.

  “Angie. Listen. Your daddy . . . well, he had harsh words for you, but he wanted you here too.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, something she hadn’t done since Angela was a child. Tentatively, she rested her hand on the middle of her daughter’s back. “I don’t . . . I don’t pretend to understand what you done. And you know how angry I was. But now . . . well, you making your own way. You went off there to that city and made your own way. Ain’t a person alive that ain’t made some mistakes.” Here she stopped talking for so long that Angela rolled awkwardly over to look at her. A sorrow Angela hadn’t seen in years colored her mother’s face. But now she was listening. “Lord knows, we all made ’em.” She drew a deep breath. “But don’t you think that steppin’ out and tryin’ to make your way was one of them. I was mad at you. Lord, yes. But I didn’t raise you to die here. I’m glad you didn’t hide.” Tears were running down her face now. The room was so still that Angela could hear the hum of the universe, the one she always stood on the landing trying to hear. The women sat together for a long time.

  After this, Angela came to know that her child had to be born in Los Angeles. When she thought of who she loved most, who she felt least alone with, it was Sheila. Sheila’s hands in her hair, Sheila’s hands on her belly. She remembered looking at Sheila one time as she drove, her hand easy on the wheel, talking about something funny and laughing. They were both laughing, and Angela looked at her and thought, Now I am perfectly happy. Right now. She thought about that moment for a long time, the way they touched each other, how alive she felt at those moments. And then she knew what to do. She picked up the phone. “Hi.”

  “Angie? Angie, is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well . . . well, what’s happening?”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Can’t do what? Can’t stand living with your folks?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t have a baby?” Sheila laughed shortly. “Too late to decide about that one.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So what can’t you do?”

  “I can’t do this without you. I can’t live here. I can’t . . . I can’t have this baby without you, Sheil.”

  Sheila was silent. For a few minutes. Then, her voice shaking, she said. “I didn’t think you could.” She went silent again. Their breath blended through the receiver. Finally, Angela spoke. “Can I come home?”

  “Yes. Yes. I want you to.”

  They both started crying at the same time. Sheila was able to speak first. “You know we’re gonna fuck this up.”

  “I know. But we’ll do it together.”

  “You got bus fare?”

  “I can get it.”

  “I’ll see you soon then.”

  “Soon then, Sheil.”

  Her parents expressed no surprise when she thanked them for taking her in and said that she had called her old roommate, Sheila, who was willing to have her come and live with her until the baby was born and maybe after. “I’ll get a job, Mama. A real job. I know that acting ain’t gonna feed this baby,” she said.

  “Well, that’s something,” said her mother.

  The night before Angela left, as she squeezed and shoved her few belongings into her suitcases, just as she had not long before to come back, her mother came into the room holding a yellowing photograph. “Angie?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You remember when you was a little girl and you found this?” Her mother extended the photograph to her. It was the beautiful woman her mother wouldn’t explain.

  “Yeah, Mama. I remember. You wouldn’t tell me who it was.”

  “Well, I think you should know now. This is your grand
mother, my mama. She died in the burning in 1921. I was just a little girl.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to tell you no more than that, so don’t ask me. But I think you ought to have this picture now. It belongs with you.”

  Angela couldn’t speak but took the photograph her mother held out and carefully slid it into the outside pocket of her suitcase. She swallowed and said, “I’ll take care of it, Mama. Thank you.”

  “Take care of yourself, too.”

  “I will.”

  Her mother took a step toward her. “You better. You about to be a mama.” Their embrace, when it came, was long and awkward. Angela thought of Sheila’s mouth on hers, how her mother would never understand. The baby kicked between them, a live thing. But silent.

  FOXY BROWN

  1974

  Here’s the scene everybody remembers from Foxy Brown: Pam Grier emerges from a biplane and stands in a field with two strong black men wearing headbands, their muscled arms glinting in the sun. The light is brittle and cheap. Her strong features are set, the eyes shards of obsidian. She’s not going to do it herself. One of the men pulls out an enormous knife and says, “He’s ready, sister.” She is wearing black leather. She nods. The men take the nervous, narrow-hipped white pimp—an actor whose name is forgotten even as Pam’s lives forever—and pin him up against his long, lean, luxe Thunderbird. It is white, too. They pull down his pants. He is screaming. He screams, “You’re crazy, Foxy. You can’t do this.” He is wearing skintight blue underwear. She does not speak, just stares. Then the men begin to cut below the belt, out of the camera’s view, and the man shrieks. Shrieks the scream of a thousand black men lynched, a thousand women raped, a thousand children’s heads bashed into walls, brains staining the wood. But this time, the white man screams and screams. Later, she will present the penis, in a pickle jar, to the white man’s evil paramour. The film is too cheaply made to have a prosthetics budget, so the white woman’s horror will be suggested, dependent on the convincing shrieks and hysterical cries of the actress. She will convince. For now, as the white man screams, Pam Grier does not look away. The sweet blood of vengeance drips to the ground, out of sight.

  PART II

  MILDRED

  13

  ANGELA WAS BORN IN 1950 INTO A CITY WEDDED to a myth. Lies whispered from the faded red-brick buildings, hung in the dust-scented air, hummed along with her mother’s sweet voice in the mornings. There was the myth that the streets flowed with oil—they didn’t. All the oil that had led to Tulsa’s prosperity lay in the vast fields to the west, which were separated from the city by the Arkansas River. Sheer will—and the willingness of the city fathers to offer whatever a workingman might need (legal or not) within its confines—led to the wealth of Tulsa. And that included the riches of Greenwood, the black section of town, where she lived. There was the myth that a man could come out to the wild land of the west and make whatever he wanted of himself. That had been true for some, but those days were long gone by the time Angela was born. There was the myth that everyone was happy with the way things were, that Tulsa was the magic city it claimed to be, an honest, decent place. But Angela’s mother, Mildred, knew that wasn’t true. She kept the pact, she didn’t tell her children about what she knew. But she’d known it since the last day of May in 1921.

  That morning Mildred knew something bad was happening. It sat over her shoulder on its haunches, its slick teeth gleaming. Her mama didn’t even play the Victrola as she went about her housework, and she shushed Mildred every time she opened her mouth: “Girl, I ain’t got time for that today. Can’t you think of nothing to do on your own? Go on out in the yard. Or go ’round to Vernella’s. I can’t have you underfoot today.” Her daddy had gone as silent as the moon. After her mama chased her out to the yard, she saw him cleaning his gun out back of the house, apparently having finished his work hours early. Had he even gone to work today? Why was he home? Why did his gun need to be cleaned? It wasn’t hunting season. She knew better than to ask any questions. She went to Vernella’s. Vernella was sitting on her front step, knees drawn up under her chin, drawing in the dooryard dust with a stick.

  “Hey, Vern.”

  “Hey, Millie. What you know good?”

  “I ’ont know. My mama fussing something awful today.”

  Vernella looked up, relief and fear at war in her eyes. “Yeah. My mama too. I heard her telling my daddy something happened down to the Drexel building yesterday. Something with some colored boy and a white lady. Then she saw me listening and told me to get on outside.” Vernella returned to drawing in the dirt, a look of elaborate boredom on her face. But her hands were shaking. Mildred’s stomach tightened. Everybody knew what happened if you messed with white ladies. Mildred sat down next to her friend, found a stick, and started drawing her own patterns in the dirt. Her patterns were more ornate and nuanced than Vernella’s. She loved the feel of the silken dust beneath her feet, the sense that she might make an image there. Always had. She thought of the colors she might use if she could somehow get them into the earth. Another time, they might have gotten up and gone to look for worms in Vernella’s mother’s lush vegetable garden. But today neither of them spoke. They were eight years old.

  All over Greenwood that afternoon, the air was molten lead. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe the boy—his name was going ’round town now, Dick Rowland—would be forgotten. Or maybe he would be the only one who would pay. The old ones didn’t think so. But the young ones could hope. So Greenwood tried to live normal that afternoon. Teenagers got ready for the prom that night. Mothers hummed a little faster than usual and prepared dinner. Folks made plans to go down to the moving pictures or out to walk the avenue in the warm Tuesday air. But it didn’t last long. The guns were loaded, the torches lit.

  Mildred’s parents sent her to bed early that evening. No explanations. And from Mildred, no protests. She kissed them both and her father put one arm tight around her, something he didn’t usually do. She smelled his bay rum and gun-oil-scented skin. Her mother kissed her gently behind the ear and brushed her hair back with her hand. They both gave her long looks before she went off in her white nightgown and careful braids, her feet brown and elegant against the floor.

  The next thing Mildred knew, her mother had materialized in her room. The first day of June had just begun. Her mother’s voice was thick and fractured. “Millie, you got to get up, get up, get up. We got to get out of here now.”

  Mildred knew that the terror had come. Her mother, who rarely raised her voice above a cultivated whisper, except to laugh, was sweating and crying. She ran her hands over her face. Her eyes bulged dangerously. “Millie, I said we got to go this minute. These white folks done lost they minds. I told your daddy we should have left last night!” Her mother grabbed her arm and yanked her out of bed.

  She fell onto the floor and her mother dragged her back up. She hurriedly shoved her feet into her Sunday school shoes, the first things that she saw. No socks. No stockings. No dress. Mildred heard explosions outside, things breaking, the occasional scream. It was already hot and her feet felt peculiar in the stiff shoes without lacy white socks. Her mother held her hand so tightly she could feel each bone. “Come on, girl. We got to go now.” Her palm was slick with sweat.

  Mildred wanted to ask where they were going, but speech eluded her. It seemed as though she ought to ask a question, but she couldn’t think what it might be. Her hip hurt where she’d hit the floor. She finally thought of the question. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “He’s gone down to the Dreamland with his gun. They trying to hold ’em off down there.”

  Her mother dragged her out the front door. They were both running as fast as they could. Once she was outside, Mildred thought she might never speak again.

  Across the road, flames leapt from Vernella’s small house. The step they had been sitting on the day before had been obliterated, orange flames horrifying the morning. The garden was torn up, destroyed. Pieces of wood, shards of crockery bowls
, what was left of a rag rug, and one of Vernella’s dolls littered the street.

  Mildred had heard gunfire before in her life. Her daddy shot cans out back sometimes and she liked to watch, to feel the startle in her bones at each blast. But then it was contained, not a threat, not like this. The air crackled with electricity and smelled of smoke and faintly of burnt flesh, like a Saturday-afternoon barbecue. For a long time afterward, she couldn’t eat without remembering that smell. “Mama, what’s happening?” she screamed over the flames.

  “White folks done lost they minds. Your daddy told me to stay in the house, but I just couldn’t. Wanna try to get over to Mount Zion. It might be safe there. They burning down every house they find.” Mildred didn’t know why her mother thought the church might be safe. Was God closer there? Where was God? The girl and her mother crouched down and ran low, porch to porch. But not low enough. The men were in front of them before they even heard their approach. Their faces were bright red, and they stank of sweat. Their guns were held down in front of their thighs. Mildred stared at them, words lost, and then felt the warm, sudden wash of urine down her legs. “Get up, nigger. We’re taking y’all down to the courthouse. And iffen you don’t come”—he made an airy wave with his gun toward a dust-covered body, maybe an old man, not fifty yards from them, his head at an odd angle, his flesh the color of a plum—“that could surely be you lyin’ there. So git up. Git!” Mildred’s mother screamed but didn’t move. She continued to kneel in the street, clutching her daughter’s hand. Mildred scrambled to her feet. Her legs were wet and sticky. Her mother still knelt, screaming. “I said, nigger bitch, get up!” There were two men. The cords in the neck of the shorter man stood out in furious relief, like they might break through the skin. Mildred’s mother didn’t rise. Mildred took an unconscious step away, sobbing, screaming, “Mama, Mama,” the only word she knew anymore. When he fired the gun and her mother fell backward into her own blood, she felt as though she’d been seeing that moment all her life. Mama, Mama. Her mother jerked once, the blood bright against the ground, then lay motionless. Mama, Mama. The taller of the two men poked her in the back with the rifle, almost knocking her down. “Come on, you little coon bitch,” he said. “Don’t stand here crying for your mama ’less you want to end up like her.” Mildred stumbled along. The only things she could see in front of her were her mother’s wide-open eyes, gazing at the blue sky starred with orange flames. Her hair was streaked with dust and blood and was wild around her head.