Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  “Jackson did have a tendency to go a little overboard,” Tank said in his most conciliatory tone.

  “You know,” Blanche said, the pitch rising in her voice along with the sparkle in her eye as she tried to keep a straight face, “they're having a separate reunion this weekend . . .” Her pause were perfectly timed, then she went on: “All the young white girls Jackson slept with when he was head of Afro House . . . over at Harvard Stadium!”

  The laughter burst from us as if we were still huddled together in the student lounge. It almost scared away the waiter who was now delivering a tray of appetizers.

  “There was some serious jungle fever going on all around, brothers, so don't be laughing too hard at Mr. Wright,” Blanche said knowingly. “Don't get me started naming names!”

  There were a couple of coughs, then genuine laughter again. Blanche had put us back in sync while we settled into the familiar act of eating together. I almost expected Otis to pop up beside the table with French fries he'd smuggled out of the hot food line.

  “Hey, has anyone heard from Otis?” I wondered out loud.

  “Otis?” Blanche wrinkled her forehead.

  “Otis, right. He used to work in the cafeteria.” Edwin was digging through his memory. “He wasn't registered though, was he?”

  “Naw,” Tank said, chewing on a Buffalo chicken wing and still looking elegant.

  “He was in some kind of probation program . . . got him the job in the school cafeteria. That brother tightened up the Black table every day!”

  “He was trying to get his life together. I remember now,” Blanche said.

  “You never went to Wally's with me and Sheila?” I asked, recalling the name of a local bar we used to sneak off to.

  “That pit?” Edwin said with enough middle-class disdain to make the Dean of Students proud.

  “Hey! Wally's wasn't as bad as some buckets of blood I went to back in Chicago. Otis was a great dancer.”

  As the memory flooded in, I realized how disappointed I was that no one had heard from him. I'd thought about Otis every once in a while over the years. In addition to an incredible smile and smooth dance moves, he'd been a stalwart supporter of the BIPs. He must have been the same age as we were, but he had the edge of someone who knew things about the world he wished he didn't.

  Me and Tank and some of the others had come from neighborhoods not too different from the South End where Otis lived. It was literally on the other side of the railroad tracks from the university; undercapitalized and forgotten by the politicians, except when the police were sent in. Then the Movement had stepped in instead.

  “Affirmative Action babies,” they call us now, which rankles my nerves. There was nothing babyish about clawing my way out of the cycle of street shootings and pregnancies in my 'hood. And certainly nothing babyfied about trying to survive on a white campus where teachers and students looked at us like we were space aliens. That was before space aliens got their own TV shows.

  I'd spent my freshman year mystified by academic topics no high school teacher had ever bothered to mention. And being humiliated by financial aid administrators who acted like they were giving me money out of their own little piggy banks. If they treated Black students that bad I couldn't imagine what working in the cafeteria had been like for Otis.

  “Earth to Roxie.” Blanche snapped me back to the table. “What're you sucking your teeth about, girl?”

  “The dim-wits trashing Affirmative Action, so don't get me started.”

  “Oh, there she go!” Tank teased.

  “How the hell did we end up in this mess?” I asked without the tiniest hope of an answer.

  “Girl, when I saw what they put Anita Hill through on TV I knew it was the end of civilization as we know it.” The tinkle in Blanche's voice was greatly subdued.

  “And that's only the stuff they let us see,” Edwin said.

  “You just got to keep pushing,” Tank said, as if trying to convince himself. “There is good stuff happening out there.”

  “Nothing to make the evening news, my brother,” Edwin said.

  “Maybe we better not be counting on the evening news,” Tank responded from a serious place deep in his chest.

  “People are too busy shopping on the Web for revolution now,” Blanche spouted, the disillusion I'd heard earlier returning to her voice.

  I know I'm something of a ranter, which is how I ended up coming to this reunion thing, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. The plushly carpeted room around us soaked up the disappointment that was spilling out of our reminiscences.

  It was hard to believe we were sitting here, only a few blocks from the campus where we'd spent four years determined to change the world. I almost felt like I was the same person I was back in the day. I didn't care any less now about people being hungry or not learning to read or making drugs their religion. Maybe I was a little slower, but still I worked forty- and fifty-hour weeks leaping in front of other news photographers and setting up impossible shooting angles. Hanging out the fourth-floor window of McMillan Hall had paid off.

  Tank looked like he could still take on the first string of anybody's opposing team, and was much smarter than I remembered. Even Blanche still had the spirit when she didn't try to flirt too much. I'm not one who believes you have to be young and poor to be hungry for action and change. But something was missing. And the comfort of the hotel bar was starting to feel like a trap.

  “Anybody mind if I take a few shots while we're hanging?” I pulled my favorite little Leica from the Le Sportsac bag I carried everywhere, relieved to stand and get some energy going.

  “Roxie!” Blanche protested as she grabbed her Fendi purse up from the floor and reapplied her lipstick. “Don't be snapping me with my mouth full.”

  “Blanche, would I do that to you?”

  “Yes.” Her pinky went up as she dropped her purse back to the floor, hoisted a small square of something from the tray of snacks, and popped it into her perfectly painted mouth.

  “Did you work on the slide show for tomorrow?” Edwin asked, excited.

  “I sent in some of the shots we had from the demo.” Oops, there was that “we” again. I went on quickly: “But I think the “Say Brother” folks from WGBH had a bunch of material. You all sent pictures in, too, right?”

  “Yeah, but you're the professional.” Tank smiled at me.

  “Not then I wasn't,” I said. I snapped Tank just as he turned his high beams on Blanche.

  “Roxie, I never sent a card or anything, but I was sorry to hear about Dennis passing,” Edwin said it in that soft voice of his. His awkward sincerity was soothing, not the hard slap I'd been afraid I'd feel when I first heard Dennis' name out loud. These had been my best friends when Dennis and I met. Our occupation of McMillan Hall provided the chance for Dennis's first professional breakthrough. The pictures he'd taken in those three days documented a serious leap in the significance of Black student activism and in the relationship between us. These were the friends who'd nurtured both events. I looked at Edwin directly, not through the camera lens and smiled. I was afraid to try to say thanks out loud. It doesn't look good for folks from Chicago to cry.

  “Those shots he took when y'all were locked up inside McMillan Hall were kickin' it!” Tank said.

  “I still have that one he sent me, I'm sleeping under that desk, remember?” Blanche said wistfully.

  I nodded and slipped back behind the camera appreciative that they felt good about Dennis. At the same time I tried to fight the feeling that Dennis was the celebrity and I was just the girl who married him. I used to really identify with Yoko Ono when she hooked up with John Lennon and the other Beatle boys got set on ragging her. Fortunately I was never going to try singing rock and roll.

  “I don't suppose you got a sympathy card from CL?” Blanche said slyly after a moment.

  “No, I don't suppose I did.”

  “Oh, don't look so grim, girl. I was just teasing. After 30 years who cares about C
harles Leonard?”

  “Charles Leonard would be first on that list,” I said. Blanche almost fell out of her chair laughing. The sound of it made my anxiety ease up. I'd been so busy remembering the things about Blanche that got on my nerves I'd forgotten how many laughs we always had together.

  “I don't know why you sisters were so hard on CL,” Edwin said.

  “You don't know what?” Blanche's voice raised only slightly, but small strands of hair threatened to explode from her do. I returned to my camera. I'd done my battling just getting myself past him in the lobby, I wasn't about to break down CL to these guys.

  “He had his nose stuck in the air a little but, damn, he was always down with us,” Tank tried to keep the conversation light.

  “Charles ‘CL' Leonard made Mike Tyson look like the Image Award winner at the NAACP.”

  “Aw, come on . . . let's . . .” Edwin was startled by the anger in Blanche's voice.

  “Let's what? Okay, how 'bout let's each of you tell me how many times you slapped your girlfriends upside their heads?”

  The guys were silent and I was too, except for the click of my shutter. Despite the statistics, it was impossible for me to conjure up a picture of either Tank or Edwin doing something like that.

  “Okay,” Blanche said letting up. “But I didn't see none of you rushing in to school that brother on keeping his hands in his pockets.”

  “That was all rumors, Blanche,” Edwin said.

  “Maybe to you all, if you didn't want to see the facts.”

  Tank looked disturbed and, for once, had no words of defense.

  ‘Go girl!' I was thinking but I figured we didn't need to have this conversation in the hotel bar. “You know folks, CL's actually here. I saw him earlier. So, uh . . .”

  We each looked up at the door as if our parents might catch us swearing. Then we returned to our champagne, everyone in an uneasy silence. I sipped from my glass remembering CL's girlfriend after me, a freshman. She'd arrived at a BIPs meeting more than once with more makeup on than was required for cranking out a newsletter. The guys never noticed and I know I never said anything. I guess nobody wanted to see what was really up. Fortunately for CL, he and I weren't dating long enough for me to find out.

  “So, do you have an archive, your own, I mean?” Edwin asked, carefully guiding us back to comfortable ground.

  “Oh yeah! We . . . I've got every demo ever staged, that was our specialty for a while.” I chewed the inside of my lip, wondering when I'd be comfortable with the singularity of the word. Even though there had been time enough for me to be used to being on my own I'd been resisting it way too long. I might as well start here and now. “I have a major collection I'm thinking of donating to some HBC sometime.”

  “Right on!” Tank said raising his glass of champagne.

  “You should do a book,” Edwin said, his eyes twinkling with enthusiasm.

  At that moment I wondered if it were possible that some of my friends back home in Chicago had somehow gotten in touch with the BIPs and bribed them to read their lines. One or another of them was always driving me crazy with ideas of photo books I should do: Black Male Professionals, Black Women Professionals, Young Black Athletes, Old Black Athletes. I could never figure out where the hell people got these ideas.

  “Yeah! A book on us. It's just the right time.” Suddenly Blanche was a publishing consultant.

  “Blanche got something, Roxie. Listen to the woman.” Edwin sat up in his chair as if he were seeing the cover right then and there.

  Whenever the idea of my doing a book came up I felt a ripple of fear pulse through my body as if a police siren was wailing outside my door. I knew I should do it. Time was passing and who better to document the awakening of the 1960s than a photographer? And now, before our eyesight gets so bad we can't see the pictures. I took some deep breaths trying to keep the ripple from turning into a tidal wave.

  “Hey, I saw that spread you did on Curtis at his marketing company a couple of years ago. In Ebony, right?” Tank leapt in for the save.

  “Didn't he look great?”

  “So that's what he's up to?” Edwin asked.

  “Public relations. In Connecticut,” Blanche answered. “We did a job with him a couple of years ago! Is he coming?”

  “Maybe. He e-mailed me a month or so back.” I was happy to have a new topic.

  “I can't believe he's still around.” Edwin said with a tightness in his voice that was puzzling. I wondered what's that all about, then I got it.

  “Of course, he's still around,” I said. “Curtis is just gay, not terminal.”

  “I know, I know . . . but that last year was hard on him. Then AIDS and everything.”

  “Let's be clear, the year wasn't hard on Curtis, it was CL and Jackson Wright that were hard on him.” Blanche was in rare form, reminding me of another reason I couldn't stand my ex and Mr. Afro House.

  “Yeah, that was the only thing they could ever agree on,” Tank said glumly.

  “Egotistical shits,” I said with a shudder.

  “I don't know what the big deal was,” Edwin said. “Long as Curtis kept his johnson in his pants around me, what'd I care?”

  “I don't think most folks felt that casual about him, Edwin,” I said flashing on the disaster our last BIPs party had turned into, at least for Curtis. When his folks came to graduation he told them that the black eye and cracked rib were from a car accident.

  “And just because Curtis is gay doesn't mean he's got to die with HIV.” I tried to keep my voice level but memory was making it hard. After four years of sister this and As Salaam Alaikum that, I was still livid at how shallow brotherhood could be. I assumed Edwin would have a deeper perspective, working in film and all.

  “Well, like I said, I'm just glad to hear he's . . . you know . . . doing okay.” Edwin's discomfort hung around him bigger than his jacket.

  “You know what's her name,” Blanched waggled her hand in the air trying to pull down a name. “. . . what's her name? You know, she got the one part in “West Side Story” they bothered to give to somebody colored. Uh . . . uh . . . you know . . . really tall, hazel eyes? She was on our floor, but down the other end.”

  “Always wore that huge green shawl!” The image began to resolve in my head. “She used to bring a big box of chocolate chip cookies back from break!”

  “Yeah!” Tanks deep voice boomed. Food would be the thing to jog his memory.

  “She's gay, too,” Blanche said as she took a sip of her champagne.

  “You're kidding?” Shock rang in Edwin's voice.

  “Uh huh. I ran into her at a conference. She works in advertising too; more television than print. It was an industry thing, in Denver a while back. She was there, with her significant other. Good looking girl, from St. Croix I think.”

  I was surprised Blanche was so casual but clearly she was not having the problem with it Edwin was. He just kept asking her if she was kidding.

  “I'm telling you I met the woman!” Blanche reiterated impatiently. “She's a nurse or something.”

  “Damn!” Edwin said.

  “Don't be a drip, Edwin.” Blanche was clearly getting to the end of her tolerance. As I watched her through the lens the set in the lines of her face wiped out all of the giggle and squiggle. I could see where Blanche was maybe deeper than her affect suggested.

  “No point getting tense.” Tank poured more champagne in Edwin's glass. “I did a program a year or so back, just for the locals, you know. Atlanta has quite a gay community,” Tank continued shyly. “If statistics are right we're due to have at least 7 more gay people show this weekend, my brother.”

  Edwin slugged the champagne down like that would make everything clearer.

  Well, we were certainly striking out with the contemporary issues. I know men can't talk about sex unless they're in the middle of having it but Edwin was about to blow our high. I figured I'd take the lull in conversation as a cue to make my exit. I searched in my bag for mon
ey to put on the table.

  Then Tank looked up and did his best imitation of an Isaac Hayes riff. All talking stopped. “Ooh Miss Hot Buttered Soul herself!!!”

  “That's Ms. Hot Buttered Soul,” Sheila Mills Baldwin said as she grabbed a chair from one of the other tables, moving across the room like the Black campus queen she'd been. Sheila was tall and slender, one of those people who always looked elegant, even in the days of combat fatigues. Her lilac silk pants suit complimented her smooth dark skin; a close ring of curls had replaced the intricate weave of braided rows. The hands that had sown together our red black and green banner were now manicured to perfection. The smile lines at the corners of her eyes only gave her character. She looked like not a day had passed, or at least no more than a week.

  My honest response was pure joy and then I felt bad that our friendship had lapsed. Hadn't friendship been at the heart of all the work we'd done? Did I let it go too easily?

  I snapped a picture of Sheila just as she eased into the circle we'd formed and tossed her large matching lilac leather Coach bag onto the floor. Her smile was luminous as the voices of the other's swirled around her in greeting. Her perfume mixed with Blanche's and Tanks after shave, filling the air around me so I couldn't think. Tank and Blanche disentangled themselves from embracing Sheila while Edwin held her chair for her.

  I stood, put my Leica back in my bag and was uncertain which direction to turn. Through a lens it's easy to put everything into focus. It only took a slight turn of the wrist and the picture was clear and clean. Too bad real life wasn't so easy. When she sat down Sheila fixed me with an impassive stare that dared me to leave.

  Yeah, this was going to be one long weekend. Shit!

  Fear of Floating

  BY BRYAN GIBSON

  “Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. . . .”