She laughed and made a few, her lips a perfect O as she sent the cloud-soft circles of smoke to the ceiling. I laughed too. Her legs were warm underneath mine. Just as the fourth ring drifted toward the ceiling, Sheila emerged from the bedroom, wearing skintight jeans and a low-cut purple blouse, her hair sleeked back into a chignon. She looked at my outfit quickly but didn’t say anything. She went to the door and lifted the picnic basket.
My mother smiled at Sheila, her eyes softening the way they always did when she looked at her, the way that made me feel as though I was in the way of something. “Put that basket down, girl,” she said, her voice a purr. “We need to get in the right mood first.” She shoved my legs off her and went over to the small boxy record player. I loved playing with the latch on it, almost as much as I loved putting pencil holes through the smooth gold fabric that covered the speakers. She rooted through the albums and pulled out an old Michael Jackson. She put on the record and the music crackled to life: “Ben.” She extended her hands to Sheila, and they started dancing.
Sheila and my mother slipped into an easy rocking rhythm together. I could hear cars passing by on the street outside as I lay and watched them. They never asked me to dance with them at moments like this. I don’t know if they would have minded if I had just gotten up and joined in. But I wasn’t that kind of kid. I wanted to be asked. They swayed through the room, laughing into each other’s breath, forgetting I was even there. I closed my eyes for a minute and imagined I was with them, feeling my hips swaying, Michael Jackson’s sweet soprano pouring into my ears like cream. But when I opened my eyes, my mother and my other mother were laughing and bumping hips, their arms around each other’s waists, and Sheila said, “Girl, remember that time when . . . ,” and my mother said, “I ain’t never gonna forget it . . . ,” and Sheila said, “Remember how he . . .” and trailed off with a quick look at me. And my mother said, “Yeah, I remember,” and dropped her arm from around Sheila’s waist and looked at her in a way that I somehow knew I wasn’t supposed to see and danced slowly over to the ashtray to pick up the cigarette still burning there as the song trailed off. She looked at me and said, “Come on, Tam. It’s time to go.” Sheila picked up the picnic basket briskly, looking a little past me, the way she always did. “Yeah, little bit. It’s time to go.” I walked out of the apartment ahead of them, alone.
When we got to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, there were already a lot of people there. There were bleachers all along the red carpet. Quite a few people came from out of town and slept overnight under the scanty shelter. And then starting at about 8:00 in the morning, the real fanatics, like Autograph Al with his three bulging shopping bags of signed autograph books, arrived. My mother told me once that he had the signature of every best actor nominee going back to 1960. This seemed unimaginably long ago to me. A1 looked every day of it, his hair gray and frizzled, his pale face scrubbed but still looking like a paper bag someone had crumpled and then flattened out, his coat a thousand miles of rutted road. As bad as he looked, the actors always obliged his nervous requests for a signature. It was considered bad luck not to give him your autograph. He was always glad to see us. “Look how big she’s getting,” he said every year, patting me on the head. I never understood it. Why was growing such a big deal to grownups? Hadn’t they done it?
We found our places on the edge of the red carpet with the same little gang of people who came every year. I even had Oscar friends: Tessie and Bessie, blond twins from Omaha who came with their Goldie Hawn-ish single mother. We played Uno and Old Maid and pestered the grownups for drinks of water for the endless hours before the arrivals began. Around 12:30 when we got there, the security was pretty light. I liked to pretend that I was one of the nominees and walk up and down the sidewalk waving and blowing air kisses and pretending to be interviewed by Army Archerd. Mama usually just watched, laughing, but one time I got her to come out onto the path. It scared me, though. She looked like she was going to cry. She walked a few steps toward the hall, then stopped. I took my mother’s hand. “You all right, Ma?” I said.
“I’m all right,” she said, her voice a little ragged. “Just feels funny to stand here. All these people all around. Makes you think what it would really be like.” She drew a deep breath. “I’m gonna go sit back down, all right, baby?”
“OK.” I heard Tessie calling to me. “I’ma go over here, all right?” I asked my mother.
“All right,” she said.
At about 3:00, everything changed. The carpet was rolled out. Large men in sunglasses and tight, dark suits with earpieces and hidden weapons began patrolling the area. All the people who had come to watch were pushed rudely to one side where the bleachers were. The limos began to arrive. And the din began.
Every year it was the same. Always so loud that the sound seemed to be inside me as much as it was outside. Always the long, long cars discharging their passengers, more angel than human. Mama held tight to my hand as though I might get swallowed up by the sound, and Sheila, who rarely touched me, kept her hand on my back the whole time. Because I was small, I could usually squeeze through to the front of the crowd to see who was coming in. My best spot so far was the year before this one; I saw Warren Beatty coming in when Reds was nominated. Unlike so many of the movie stars Mama and Sheila and I had seen, he was quite tall; so many of them were really short. He was beautiful. Mama had squeezed in just behind me and she gasped and tightened her grip on my hand as he passed within a few feet of them. “Girl, if you could have seen him in Splendor in the Grass. Good Lord,” she murmured. I couldn’t take my eyes off Mama’s face. She looked the way a person might if she’d seen God. We stood, holding hands, staring at where he’d been for a long time after he left.
My mother especially liked actresses who weren’t afraid to show off their bodies and wore a lot of sequins. “That girl really knows how to work it,” she’d say in a satisfied, soothed tone after a particularly nice outfit came by. And this year, we had something extra-special to wait for. First was Richard Gere, whom I adored beyond all reasoning. I had been changed forever by his surly, sweet face in An Officer and a Gentleman. I saw only the back of his tux as he hustled by, but even that made my teeth ache with joy. But also, this year, thanks to that same movie, we had to look out for Lou Gossett. He was the first black man in forever to get nominated for a major award. As my mother and Sheila told me over and over and over again, it was our duty to turn out for the brother. When he got out of his limo, we would be there for him. So we were. Believe it or not, we got a good look at him. Sheila and my mom kicked their shoes off for better jumping leverage. “Go ’head, Lou. We here for you! You know you deserve it! Go on, Lou.” That kind of thing, at the top of their lungs. So loud and determined in fact, that he turned and offered them a broad, perfect smile. Though I was mortified by their screaming, I couldn’t help but be charmed by that smile. And they were both struck into grinning, girlish silence for a moment. “Good luck, Lou,” my mom finally said softly at his retreating form. We left not long after that. What else were we gonna see that was as good? And that evening, when he won his prize for Best Supporting Actor, the first black man ever to win that award, all three of us sat around our ritual bowl of popcorn, them with their ritual glasses of Zinfandel and me with my ritual glass of sparkling cider, and after we all stopped crying, we raised our glasses in a toast. It was the best Oscar night ever.
22
THERE WAS ALWAYS ONLY THE THREE OF US. NO one came from anywhere. Not anywhere that they remembered fondly anyway. The only thing I ever heard Sheila say about her life before Los Angeles was “I was born in Chicago and my mama died a drunk and Lord help me if I ever go back there again.” My mother was much the same. When I asked her where Tulsa was, she sucked her teeth and said, “Oklahoma. Nowhere near here. That’s all you need to know, Tam.” And when I was six and she picked me up from a visit to my friend Ruby’s, a whole house in Los Feliz, with two sofas and an orange tree in the backyard and loud with gr
andmas and uncles and brothers and sisters and a mother and a daddy, I asked her, “Where’s the rest of our family? How come I don’t have a daddy?” She didn’t answer for a long time. Then, twirling the back of her hair, she said, “You got a daddy. Everybody does. Can’t get born without one. But he ain’t the one raising you. Sheila and I are doing that.” Then she swung into the next lane and she wasn’t going to say one more thing about it. I knew when she was done talking. But I kept wondering. Where were the rest of us? No grandmother to cluck over me. No uncle pulling up in a purple lowrider after school for the girls to giggle at. No brother or sister to roll my eyes at in contempt for his or her stupidity or to worship from afar. No father to fear or adore or complain about. The three of us might have been born from the desert soil.
On holidays when there was no school, I often went with my mother to Dr. Gillespie’s office, where she worked as a receptionist. Dr Gillespie was plastic surgeon to those who wanted to be stars. He adored my mother. I guess that’s why he tolerated me hanging around the office as much as I did. His clientele was, by and large, nervous and wildly optimistic, sure that if they got the right look, the life-changing role would come next. My mother was always very at ease and jokingly authoritative with them. Later, I realized she practically had been one of them before I was born, sure that fame was just around the corner. She had to wear a white smock with her name pinned on it, but she always pulled it into a waist-hugging shape with a chain belt across the back and took pains with her hair and shoes so that even in that style-free outfit, she stood out. The prettiest girl in the room. I brought books with me and paper and tried to be quiet and good. It was hard, though. It was so boring.
On the day I’m talking about, I was nine. We had been at the office only about forty-five minutes when the phone rang and, rather than putting it through to the doctor or taking on her usual brisk yet soothing tone, her voice took on the southern softness that it only had when she talked to me or to Sheila. “Hi, Sheila, what is it?”
“What? When? And they called you? Yeah, I know you hadn’t left for work yet . . . No I never did. OK. OK. I will. We’ll talk about it tonight. Right. Right. OK. Bye.” She hung up the phone and leaned forward onto the desk, her fingers pressing hard into her eyes.
“Mama, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She looked up at me. Her eyes shone with tears. I’d never seen that before. “What is it, Mama?” She wheeled her office chair over toward me, pulled me onto her lap, which frightened me more, even as it comforted me.
“Oh, baby girl . . . my father died. Your grandfather. I didn’t . . . you know we don’t see each other much. Not at all.” She reached up and wiped her eyes. “You never even met him, did you? Well . . . well . . . anyway, he died and . . . that makes me sad. Sheila was just leaving for work when Jolene called.”
“Who’s Jolene?”
She laughed shortly. “Listen, Tam. I got a lot to tell you later, but we can’t talk about it now. I’ll tell you . . . I’ll tell you some things I should have told you a long time ago when we get home.” She lifted me off her lap, brisk and businesslike again. “The waiting room’s full. I gotta get these people in to see Dr. Gillespie.” I went back to my book, but I kept snatching looks at her. Who was this Jolene? And Mama had a daddy and she didn’t even go see him? I’d have killed for one.
I seethed quietly the rest of the day. I wrote and drew and did my homework and read Harriet the Spy for the eight millionth time. (My mother didn’t understand it with me and books, but I didn’t care. They were my life. Them and the movies.) Mama, for her part, after her brief show of emotion in the morning, resumed the day with the same gotta-get-it-done attitude that she always had. There were patients to get in and out of the office, insurance forms to be dealt with, nervous breast implant patients to be calmed. Air Supply played soothingly on the sound system she controlled. The air conditioner hummed. I thought we’d never get to go home.
Finally, the day ended. She had just lit her cigarette and turned the key in the ignition when I asked again. “Who’s Jolene, Mama?”
“She’s my sister. Your aunt.”
“I have an aunt?”
“Yes. You do. In Tulsa, where I’m from.”
“Then what do I need Sheila for?” It just came out. I couldn’t believe it. It just came out.
Mama gazed at me, her eyes narrowed against the smoke. She reminded me of Claude Rains’s mother in Notorious (we had just rented it the weekend before), with that same hard, hard look. “Sheila isn’t for you. She isn’t your aunt. She’s . . . she’s important to me. She’s our family.”
“OK,” I said in a small voice. “But I got an aunt in Tulsa?”
“Yes, you do. And a grandmother and grandfather and an uncle and a few cousins. You had a grandfather. His name was Johnny Lee Edwards. He was a pharmacist. I . . . well . . .” She took a long, shuddering drag of her cigarette and nosed the car into the next lane.
“Am I gonna get to meet them? Grandma and all, I mean.”
“We’ll see.”
Sheila always got home later than we did, working all the way out at the airport and her hours being 10:00 to 6:00 and usually more like 7:00. When she got home that night, she held Mama tightly for a long time, and said, “Well, Angie, what you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. Let’s talk about it later.” So we watched Miami Vice, and they smoked and sipped wine, and I was sent to bed and I could hear their voices late into the night. “You ought to go, Angie.”
“I don’t know, Sheil. He . . . they didn’t ever approve of me living out here. And what would I say about you? I don’t want to go back there.”
“But he’s your father.”
“I’ll send a note. We can’t afford it anyway.” Then silence. I drifted to sleep. I never found out what else they said. I never found out how my mother made the decision she did. But the next day my mother made me sign a flowery sympathy card in which she had written this: “I’m sorry I couldn’t come. I just couldn’t afford it right now. Daddy was a good man and you all have my love.” She put in a school picture of me and a snapshot of the two of us together—no Sheila. She let me open the slot of the mailbox to put it in. I did. I always loved doing that. But as I did, I vowed that if I ever found my daddy, I wouldn’t ever let him go. I would be at his funeral when he died, no matter how much it cost, even if it was $250 or something (I thought that was an insane amount of money at the time). If I ever got hold of the least crumb of information about him, I would never let him go.
23
BY THE TIME I WAS ELEVEN, THE WAYS I DIFFERED from my mother were set as hard as stone. My mother loved the surfaces of things, how they looked. I wanted to know about the speed of images, how to capture them and make them mine. She’d live with broken switches and blown light bulbs for months rather than attempt even the simplest home repair. She couldn’t fathom my longing to be behind the camera, to be the one who makes the picture, not the one in it. But I didn’t mind. I liked to keep things at a distance. Machines were more trustworthy. I always knew what was going on inside them, or I could find out if I examined them intently enough. They behaved the same way no matter what I did. Once when I was six, while my mother was in the shower and Sheila was out, I pulled a chair over to our kitchen counter, dragged our toaster oven down by the cord, and, using a screwdriver I found in a drawer, completely disassembled it before she got her mascara on. As she stepped out of our tiny bathroom, resplendent as always, I looked up from a sea of small metal parts, two gears in my hands. I smiled. I had never been so content; at last I could see inside an object and find out what made it work.
From the time I was about seven, Mama’s favorite thing to do was to come home from the video store with a box or two under her arm and announce grandly, “Let’s watch Mommy tonight!” The three of us ate pizza and popcorn and drank Dr. Pepper, and Sheila and my mother took turns covering my eyes during the really sexy parts and the worst gun battles. They laughed a lot too,
remembering. So much sometimes that they forgot to cover my eyes. And they sat right up next to each other, their legs touching, their eyes shining. It wasn’t long before I knew all the films by heart, Mama’s favorites of the movies she’d appeared in: Coffy (third girl from the left who got her dress ripped off in the fight scene). Cleopatra Jones (an extra in the airport scene; “I named you after her, baby,” Mama invariably shrieked as Tamara Dobson, who played Cleopatra, strode onto the screen). Street Fighting Man (dancing in a G-string and no top on the bar in the bar scene). No Way Back (she was onscreen for almost ten minutes and had a couple of lines). The movies were loud, confusing, and violent. I got used to them, but I never really liked them much. So much screaming and shooting, and the women were always naked. My own mother was always naked. It was embarrassing. I never asked her about that. What was I gonna say? How weird it was to see my mother rolling and screaming, naked, in a movie? Or ask her how it felt to have Pam Grier rip off her dress? I couldn’t ask that. I let her think it didn’t bother me.
One time as she was putting me to bed after a movie, she sat on the edge of my bed for a minute and briefly ran her hand over my forehead. It made me feel bold enough to ask a question. “Mama?”
“Yeah, Tam?”
“Was my daddy in the movies?”
Her eyes got big and tearful. I was terrified. “As much as I was, I suppose,” she said after a long time. “Not that much.” The tears never fell. “He didn’t want to be a daddy. And I . . .” She trailed off. I could have asked a million more questions. They were all in my throat, choking me. She gazed past me, absently twirling the hair at the back of her neck. When she started doing that, I knew better than to keep asking. Here was another thing we’d never talk about. “Well, we do all right without him,” she said eventually.
Third Girl from the Left Page 18
