Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva

by Victoria Rowell

  “Shush your mouth! What’d I say ’bout talkin’ like that in my house,” Grandma scolded. “Back in the day I’da washed your mouth out with soap.”

  “I ain’t said nothin’ Beulah ain’t never heard before.”

  “Pipe down and button up,” Grandma commanded. “That girl and her fresh mouth, always running like a bell clapper.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Miss Whilemina’s fast granddaughter Eartheletta. Got herself in a little trouble so she’s visitin’ from Chicago for a few weeks thinkin’ she grown. Now listen to me, Beulah, never mind all that foolishness out there, I raised you right and you’ll get yours the old-fashioned way. Besides, you done won eleven NAACP Image Awards.”

  “Yes, Grandma, and I’m very proud of that,” I replied, knowing I couldn’t begin to explain Hollywood politics. Though the prestigious Image Awards were star-studded, and the NAACP was steeped with rich political and theatrical history as far back as the 1915 protest against D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, the painful absence of qualified brown people before and behind the lens still remained and affected everything from soap operas to feature films. The camera didn’t lie, and it was still out of focus.

  “And how many times can Gina Chiccetelli . . . I mean Emmy Abernathy say she’s been on the cover of Jet or Ebony? Shoot, I have two scrapbooks full of your clippin’s for safekeepin’. Winnin’ an Image Award is one heck of a prize, baby, you right up there with all the big shots, and Harry Belafonte still looks good, used to be sweet on him. I’m lookin’ at that Image Award you sent me right now. I have it smack dab in the middle of the kitchen table with the salt and peppa’ shakers so no one can miss it when they come visit. Now, I know there’s one award missin’, and I bet you even keepin’ a space for it, but don’t you worry, somethin’ bigger is comin’ down the pike. I can feel it. Been prayin’ for it to happen for ya.”

  “Thanks, Grandma. Just wish the haters would stop the madness and vote fair.”

  “Babygirl, you know that ain’t gonna happen ’cause you’d win. And if you win they’d think you too big for your britches and had too much power, and if you had too much power you’d change some things, and they can’t have that. Beulah, what have I told you? When you leave this earth, awards ain’t gonna matter one iota. ‘A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth . . .’ That’s Luke 12:15. ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul?’ That’s Mark 8:36. Now don’t you go concernin’ yourself with all that other foolishness. Who gives a good kitty what those simpletons on the story think? You and I both know you can act up a storm and so do your fans. You’re favored and can’t no one take that from you.”

  Grandma Jones’s friend Miss Odile, a member of the Church of the Solid Rock choir, told me when I was a little girl that I had something wild behind my onyx eyes that folks just couldn’t put their finger on, that I was intelligent beyond my years and beyond book smarts. I had learned the hard way and by listening to the whispers between the lines of life. My inner compass always in overdrive, I read people comin’ and goin’, by using what was oftentimes frowned upon, “the knowing,” my intuition, my lifeline. Regrettably, I stopped listening to it as I got older, trading my psychic wealth in for a different kind of fortune.

  “Now stop running up your phone bill and go to work and make that money. Lord knows that remodel must be costin’ you a pretty penny. Sure wish I could see it.”

  Grandma Jones had never been on a plane in her life. Furthermore, she was certain California was going to slide into the Pacific Ocean when the next earthquake struck. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about her prediction, but Grandma Jones was spot-on about my kitchen remodel. Like everyone else in Hell-A, I was dealing with a pirating gangster, also known as a general contractor. I nicknamed him Jack the %#&*ing Rip-Off. The project was already six months overdue.

  “Okay, Grandma, I better get to work.”

  “And tell my grandbaby I said she needs to write to me more.”

  “I’ll tell her tonight,” I promised. “She’s in New York for two weeks with Dwayne, visiting his family. And Grandma, I almost forgot, are you taking your high blood pressure medicine?”

  “No, it makes me feel funny. I went back to boilin’ the bush with a little parsley and my stewed prunes. I feel just fine now.”

  “Grandma, you know what the doctor said—”

  “Yeah, I know what he said, but that don’t make him right. Doctors these days have a pill for everything, and I’ll be doggone if I’m gonna make somebody rich off my itty bitty Social Security. Listen, Beulah, you know I love you to bits and sure wish you’d go back to church. I’ll keep prayin’ for that end.”

  “I love you, Grandma.”

  We hung up.

  Grandma Jones was my rock. I’d never known my mother, Maddie Mae. She’d died giving birth to me, a mere child herself at sixteen. Aside from Ivy, Grandma Jones was the only real family I had.

  In that moment, I desperately wished I could go back home for no other reason but to rest my head on Grandma’s talcum-powdered chest.

  CHAPTER 3

  Cotton Capital of the World

  FLASHBACK—CIRCA 1990

  Before excommunicating myself from the tambourine-shaking Church of the Solid Rock childhood I grew up in, I needed to take care of some unfinished family business.

  In the short summer months, Grandma Jones shared her secret escape, her tired old soap opera, Yesterday, Today and Maybe Tomorrow, while massaging comfort into my dusty scalp. As she lounged in overalls that could walk themselves, I scanned our front room from between her knees. It was a cluttered hodgepodge of personal treasures and furniture that she would never let go of, a collage of religious items and funeral fans, plastic fruit and silk flowers. Oval-framed photographs, including one of her deceased husband, Orville, hung in the center of long-dead relatives against dulled wallpaper, their gloomy expressions peeking out from behind bubbled glasses.

  I’d better not make a sound or else. Anyone who knew Grandma Jones knew to strictly adhere to her rules when her “stories” were on: “Don’t call, don’t talk and definitely don’t visit!”

  Witnessing yet another soap-a-licious sex scene, I drifted, remembering one warm afternoon under a wide blooming dogwood, raining dainty white petals on my face.

  “Thanks for bringing me a cola, Keithie.”

  “It ain’t for drinkin’,” he dryly replied, clumsily unbuttoning my dress.

  Naϊvely I asked, “W-w-ell, if it ain’t for drinkin’, what’s it for?”

  “Just in case.”

  I didn’t know diddly-squat about contraception, but I did learn soft drinks could be used for more than quenching ordinary thirst.

  There were two things Grandma never missed, church and her “stories.” She had a unique way of breathing requiring her whole body to conspire to do so: inflating her Mahalia Jackson–size bosom like a big helium balloon, holding her breath for several seconds before exhaling. The rhythm suddenly stopped and so did her braiding. Alarmed, I scrambled to my feet and leaned in. Relieved, I felt the shallowest exhale of baking soda breath, informing me that Grandma Jones was still alive.

  I tiptoed across the creaking floorboards, turned down the volume, and just two channels away found an oasis in a vintage movie already in progress. Though the reception was poor, I made out the glamorous women doing exactly what I secretly wanted to do. Everything crystallized as I raptly watched the dazzling ladies parade around in pretty crinoline dresses, listening to their fancy talk.

  Grandma believed the devil’s work was concealed in TV, with the exception of her “stories” of course, so she forbid me to watch anything she didn’t approve of first. But this was my chance to take a bite out of forbidden fruit while she catnapped, and boy, was it sweet.

  As soon as she began to stir, I switched back to her “love in the afternoon,” jettisoning out, organ music playing
as credits rolled.

  Next I heard, “Mother Hubbard, I missed my stories again! Beulah, why didn’t you wake me up? Shooot!”

  Without fail after her meltdown, Grandma got on the phone getting the scoop.

  “Shush your mouth, Whil, you don’t say, tell me my girl Calysta lived. Whachoomean, next week? Can’t stand those cliff-hangers, make us all wait till Monday to find out if somebody lived or died. Who? Thought that old buzzard got hit by a bus last year or some such foolishness. A ghost? If they keep writin’ wishy-washy and bringin’ folks back from the dead I’ma stop watchin’.”

  My earliest theatrical memories were eavesdropping, listening to the vivid stories told by Miss Odile. In cinematic detail, she shared the wicked adventures of her sister, Minnie Red, living in New York City doing the devil’s work, while Grandma Jones listened.

  “Sakes alive, Minnie’s up north struttin’ on that stage big as day, performing half naked with them opera folks, when she could be right here in Greenwood as the musical director of our church choir, T’h!”

  As I stood in the cut of our damp pantry listening, all the glittery descriptions of Minnie Red up north sounded anything but sinful to me. She was where the real divas dwelled. She had the right idea gettin’ the heck outta Greenwood. I’d only wished it were me protected by the supernatural force field of a stage.

  That night I closed my eyes and ran away to join the opera folks in cloudland. You couldn’t tell me I didn’t belong either, proudly garbed in a medieval helmet, curled ram antlers growing from my head toward the heavens with lots and lots of bushy red synthetic extensions trailing past my ample backside, cosmically priming me for Hollywood.

  Dreaming on, in miles of diaphanous chiffon, suspended above the enormous brightly lit expanse, attached to a series of cables, I weightlessly winged it from stage right to stage left to the shrill of a rotund prima donna.

  “O sublime fantasy, lasting castle-builder, keep me birdlike, away from my countrified earthbound existence in the Cotton Capital of the World . . .”

  Suddenly the songbird ceased to sing, a deafening silence replacing her like a bad understudy. My heart raced. Everything stopped—that is, almost everything. Tragically, I had run out of stage and cable. Wingless, I perilously plummeted into the black vortex of an orchestra pit. That’s where the damn dream abruptly ended. Knowing then as I surely know now, it was only the beginning of lights, camera, calamity, and claws.

  MEGASHOCKER! Toby Gorman of The Rich and the Ruthless is in the news again, kids, and it ain’t for a Sudsy Award. Performing a lewd act and exposing himself in public is the official charge. Gorman’s lawyer had this to say about his client: “Toby is young and acted under the influence. He’s really a sweet kid!” Supportive members of R&R’s cast packed the Los Angeles courtroom, and of course, Phillip McQueen and Alison Fairchild Roberts broke down in tears after the sentence was read. But really, it wouldn’t be the first time a soap star had made scandalous headlines and for far worse.

  The Diva

  CHAPTER 4

  Bigtooth Maple

  My life took a dramatic turn one ordinary Saturday afternoon at the tender age of seventeen. It began the way it always did, dreadfully, cleaning an inheritance I knew I’d never claim. Somethin’ was gonna happen, oh yes, I predicted things all the time and was usually right. Scared some folks half to death too.

  Running late and pedaling double-time, I’d forgotten to tie up my braids, unraveling the way an old lie was about to. Couldn’t risk the chunky church ladies tattlin’ on me. They all thought a girl runnin’ around with loose hair meant flirt’n and conceit and that was a sin. So I turned my rusty bike around and headed home quick in a hurry.

  Rolling up on the lawn flushed, with the taste of salty perspiration in my mouth, I ran toward the back screen door. But before I opened it I stopped dead in my tracks, hearing familiar voices coming from the woodshed. I sank down in the clover and crabgrass and crawled closer.

  Peering through dusty windowpanes, amid bunches of drying homegrown herbs I saw the obstructed profiles of Grandma Jones and Pastor Chester Winslow, the white town preacher.

  I was able to make out every other word over the drumbeat of my heart, but what I saw filled in the blanks.

  “How’s . . . television work . . . and how’s my . . . ?”

  Never looking up, she replied with a nod.

  He kept talking, I strained to hear. Then something happened that shook me to the core, something that was clearly routine. He handed over an envelope crammed full of cash.

  “. . . takin’ real . . . care of my little . . .”

  Feeling sick, I collapsed to the ground, under the stinging truth that Winslow plundered the plate every Sunday. He took up two collections and now I knew why.

  “The second collection is for a very special cause.”

  Everyone in the congregation wondered what that “special cause” might be.

  “Shake it down ’n’ roll it ovah. If you’ve got five give ten, if you got ten give twenty, but good God Almighty whatever you do, don’t let me hear loose change hit my dish.”

  The holy looter walked out our shed, his monstrous two-tone Cadillac kickin’ up dust as Grandma shuffled back into the house with the weight of guilty knowledge on her shoulders.

  Back on my bike, riding it like the dickens, I took a shortcut, a narrow path sliced through the woods, fragrant with wild blueberries, beating Winslow by a nick.

  Oblivious, I charged out of a service room, looping an apron around my neck, a bobby pin between my teeth.

  “Whoa, slow down, Beulah, where’s the fire?” he asked as he hung his straw hat in the vestibule. “My goodness, I don’t think I’ve evah seen you in such dis-a-rray or in a rush to work.”

  Caught off guard, a mountain of tousled hair piled on top of my sweaty head, I stood there, stuck in quicksand until he asked, “How’d you get those grass stains?”

  Glancing down to see the evidence of spying earlier, I removed the bobby pin from my mouth and answered, “I w-was . . .” I stuttered, feeling perspiration trickle down my back.

  “Never mind, Beulah. Why don’t you take that rat’s nest down so pastor can see just how long all that thick hair is. Reminds me of your mother. Promise I won’t say a word to your grandma.” He chuckled, staring at me as if reliving his pitchy past.

  “No! I mean I have a lot of work to do today.”

  Startled, he snapped himself back and responded, “Yes, well get my tea ready and make it snappy.”

  I scurried into the kitchen, sharpening my teeth on a bold plan.

  Along with unmistakable traits from my father, I inherited my mother’s face, soul, and the task of cleaning Winslow’s house.

  If the truth be told, I wasn’t the only child sired by him. Under the pretense of offering spiritual guidance and bereavement counseling, he preyed on innocence and took advantage of trust. The jackleg preacher had a long history of enlightening with more than just words, lifting the downtrodden with one hand while helping himself to the collection plate and the young sanctuary sisters with the other.

  I came to understand that my grudge would have to be patient, and no one saw my fury comin’. At seventeen, I’d already worked for Winslow for three long, bitter years.

  Like clockwork, I removed the beautifully appointed Limoges tea service I’d washed countless times from the china closet I’d dusted just as many, folded the monogrammed serviette I had starched and pressed, and placed it on the silver tray I hated polishing. Winslow received tea every Saturday afternoon after penning his Sunday sermon.

  “Beulah, where’s my tea, I’d like to have it while I’m still alive.” He snickered as though he’d said something funny.

  From beneath grizzled eyebrows, he followed my every move as I set down the tray in his mothball-scented office.

  The nauseating request “Why don’t you stay?” came every Saturday afternoon and I declined with the same worn-out answer as I poured.

&nb
sp; “Sorry, pastor, I have chores at home.”

  Maybe the repulsive coot wanted to confess, but it was too doggone late and a truth I already knew.

  Eyes narrowing to a sinister ice blue, he dismissively flicked the back of his spotted hand with a sugar cube pinched between his abnormally long fingers, resembling falcon’s talons that always had Friday night’s catch gucked in ’em.

  I walked out of his office, down the long hallway, the same way I walked in, through the front door, unscathed with my panties on.

  I never looked back.

  CHAPTER 5

  Shedding a Shady Past

  Quicker Than a Crepe Myrtle

  Could Shed Its Bark

  As we strolled arm in arm just like we did every Sunday for eight o’clock service, Grandma Jones noted, “What an outstanding morning, Beulah.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sure is.”

  No sooner did she say that, she asked, “What the devil could all the fuss be about?” noticing folks carryin’ on something terrible in the hazy sunshine. It was pure pandemonium outside the Church of the Solid Rock.

  “Sister Jones, Sister Jones,” Deacon Cyrus cried out, frantically half-limping down the nasturtium-lined walkway, waving his handkerchief. “Pastor Wins . . . Pastor Wins . . . Pastor Winslow’s on Main Street!”

  Grandma tightened her grip on my arm.

  “When pastor didn’t show up this morning, Sister Odile done run over to his house and found him dead at his desk, mercy . . .”

  He’d need a truckload of that, I thought as I pretended to be consumed with grief.

  Grandma Jones had to be led under a shady bigtooth maple where my childhood friend Seritta, pregnant with her first, cooled her with a recycled fan featuring a shepherding Jesus on one side and an ad for Pecks Funeral Home & Life Insurance on the other.