Maybe I’d always known on some level. Perhaps it was my photographer’s eye. Had I missed hints or shoved them away; had my father alluded to it in his oblique way the few times we’d met? Maybe I’d known, but because Bunny never acknowledged it, nor anyone else, I didn’t absorb it, at least not consciously. Was it the reason my maternal relatives had nothing but smirks and religious material to give to me? Was Daisy’s lighter skin and waspish features a reason to hang around and mine a reason for my father to leave?
All I knew was that it should’ve been a bigger surprise than it was. It should’ve rocked me, but instead I was mostly irked. Howl Heart, indeed. Did the spelling make finding him in the eighties impossible? It was the last name that derailed me. Did he change his name partly to keep me away? I doubted he gave me much thought—music drove his car. Not much else mattered. Sounded a bit familiar.
“Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference.”
Robert Frank
I called Bunny later.
“He was certainly not half-black,” said Bunny, sounding outraged. “Look, maybe it was the sixties, but the sixties you’re thinking of came much later in places like the Berkshires. I’d never have dated a black man there or then. My goose would’ve been cooked if I had, sad to say. Anyway, all the girls in Lennox that summer dated Hal. He was real handsome, a good dancer, had some dough. Never heard one of them suggest he was colored.” Bunny sighed, like the air had gone out of her. “Sorry, black. The world was different. Restaurants in the Berkshires didn’t hire black waitresses. The only black woman I knew cleaned the place after it closed at night. Black men pumped gas, cleaned toilets, or shined shoes. Oh, it might have changed in New York, LA, or Chicago, but not where we came from.”
“You talk about Massachusetts as if it were Mississippi,” I fired back, annoyed with my mother as usual. “If that’s the case, he definitely wouldn’t have told anyone he was black. You’re giving me the very reasons he’d hide it. Any wonder he didn’t tell you?”
I could picture him playing in the orchestra pit for a summer run of South Pacific, a show about racism, and having to keep his color quiet. For the first time, I felt sorry for him. “Didn’t you ever meet his family?”
Bunny was silent for a long minute, remembering. “They didn’t come to the wedding. Sent us a gift and a card.” She paused. “Hal claimed they were old and not well. They lived in Oakland, or somewhere out on the west coast, and couldn’t make a long trip. Weddings weren’t such a big deal in the sixties. Back then, an aunt with a brownie camera took pictures. A few people, a meal of casseroles, punch, and a white cake, a nice dress. Didn’t seem odd at the time. I was relieved not to have to put up a lot of strangers, to spend my tips on fancy food, flowers.”
“Did he ever show you a picture of his family? He must have. And what about the way he spelled his name?”
“I saw a few pictures. His mother and a sister, I think. No way they looked black. Of course, they were black-and-white pictures and lousy ones at that.” Bunny stopped suddenly. “Look, I knew he used ‘Howl’ professionally—sort of a joke, something to catch your attention. But it’s Hal Hart on the wedding certificate. He never suggested I change my name to Heart.” Bunny was still talking. “My family would’ve come down on me like a ton of bricks if they thought I was marrying a black man. You know what they were like. I think you’ve got it wrong. I would’ve known it. Sensed it. He was on the road most of the time, but we were together for nearly seven years.”
I was silent for a minute. I’d thought the same thing an hour or so ago—thought I would’ve known it. But why would either of us have known it if he didn’t tell us—if he was light-skinned enough to fool virtually everyone? What would’ve tipped us off?
“I bet it’s why he left,” I said. “Maybe he was afraid I’d turn out to be too dark to pass. He got away with it once with Daisy—she looked like you. But he couldn’t chance it with a second child. You might find out he was black. It was too late for it all to come out—easier to disappear.”
“Why didn’t he come back when he saw you didn’t look black?” My mother’s voice was more puzzled than argumentative.
Maybe marriage didn’t suit an itinerant musician. Maybe being a family man didn’t either.
“I’m a lot darker than Daisy was. I could be a light-skinned partially black woman.” I realized that’s what I was, and a calm descended.
“There’s that,” my mother finally said, probably relieved that his desertion had finally proven to be my fault. “Daisy was porcelain. Like me.” She sound satisfied for about ten seconds. “I don’t ask you about him much, but do you still see him now and then?”
“You don’t ask at all.”
“But do you?”
“It’s been at least five years.”
“So he could be dead for all we know. He’d be well into his seventies. Hal in his seventies. That’s plain weird.”
“Seventy-six. And he’s still alive. It’s pretty easy to keep track of people now.” I closed my eyes and pictured the apartment building I’d seen on Google Earth. I could nearly look into his window.
“You gonna call him and tell him you know?” Her voice had gone soft.
“I don’t know.”
“Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.”
Berenice Abbott
I read the kid’s death notice in Ben’s newspaper upstairs the next morning, crouching in the hallway and turning the pages furtively. It finished with the sentence, “Visitation Monday 3-9 p.m. at the Fontenel Funeral Home.” I folded the newspaper up, returned it to Ben’s perky green welcome mat, and crept back downstairs. Although I would never see this kid or photograph him, I could picture him at Bill’s. Imagine Bill preparing the body. This one would be dressed as simply as possible.
I’d been looking for a story or obit about Derek’s death. Or other deaths, of course. This was what it’d come to now—checking death notices to see if Bill was freezing me out. I was sick to death of the whole project. Sick of what I’d faced again and again over these long hot months. Discovering my limits involved a lot more angst than I’d expected.
Other than a few rushed phone calls, I hadn’t seen or talked to Bill in several weeks. I also had the impression his employees had been ordered to brush me off when I called.
“He’s up at his mother’s place, Ms. Hart.” Or, “He’s tied up with a bereaved family.”
Maybe I was paranoid, but it wasn’t only about getting the last photographs; I genuinely missed Bill. Could it be I was falling for him? Or had I fallen for him a long time ago? Had I finally succumbed to a man’s charms, or was I merely a sore loser, imagining him with another woman? Bill liked sex too much to go this long without it; maybe he’d always had other women and I’d been too obsessed with my own work to notice it.
Months ago, long before any of this business started, a client particularly appreciative of my photographs of her son’s bar mitzvah, gave me a gift certificate for products and services at a spa at Somerset Mall—the Red Coat, Red Hat, or Red Door Spa. Something like that. I rummaged through drawers looking for it. A ritzy spa in a ritzy store at a ritzy mall. The city of Detroit was without a major mall, and in recent years the ones located in the inner rim suburbs had also been deserted or turned over to Dollar Stores and cheap clothing and shoe franchises.
Right now, I needed the amenities a day at a spa would provide, despite my misgivings and the time involved—I wanted a day filled with coddling, of letting a nameless stranger put his hands on me. A good male masseuse might pound or rub some of the anxiety out. I found the certificate in the last drawer I opened, checked the expiration date, and saw the amount was for $500. What the hell! Maybe Bunny would come—a real mother-daughter day. Truthfully, I’d no one else to ask. My uncomfortable conversation with Bunny from the night before needed healing. I was blaming Bunny for my father’s sins. She was a victim of his subterfuge as much as me. More. Maybe t
here was more to be learned over the course of a day of soft music, candlelight, skilled hands.
“Neither of us is going to be comfortable at that place,” was Bunny’s first comment once I got her out of bed. It was only seven, early for a waitress on the late shift. Bunny grew quiet for a minute. “It’s hoity-toity land out there. Sure you got enough dough-re-me for both of us? I can’t afford to chip in.”
“I’ve got enough. My treat, head-to-toe.”
“Head to tip, you mean?”
“Yes, Mom. Including the tip. I’ll make appointments at eleven if I can. They shouldn’t be too busy on a Monday.” After listening to several more potential deal-breakers from her lips, we began the long process of hanging up, eventually agreeing to meet at 10:45.
“In front of the glass elevators,” Bunny said. “On the north side. Near Macy’s.”
“Macy’s?” I didn’t know Macy’s had landed in Michigan.
“Used to be Marshall Fields and before that J.L. Hudson’s.” Bunny paused. “But for God’s sake, Violet, it’s been Macy’s for like—oh, about fifteen years. Don’t you ever shop anywhere but resale? If you bought new clothes once in a blue moon, you’d know the names of the major retail stores. Personally I hate Macy’s. Same merchandise as Marshall Field’s but higher price tags. New York stores think they’re grand. Folks in the Midwest get to pay for their parades and fireworks.”
Bunny hung up without waiting for a response. I wished I’d had a chance to remind her I’d been brought up on resale; new clothes felt wrong next to my skin. I liked things better when the threads were a little loose, the color mellowed.
I decided to leave a bit early, hoping to buy a new dress I could tolerate. I cruised Saks, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom’s, and Macy’s—all stores I detested—before finding the perfect dress in a smaller shop. I could ill afford the prices, but the situation demanded it.
The dress was a pewter-colored sharkskin number. It fit like a second skin to the waist, and below it got tighter still before ending at the knee. The salesgirl, perhaps twenty-two, was all atwitter over the fact she’d sold the dress, one seemingly destined to end up on the sales rack.
“Only looks good on a woman like you,” she said, helping with the zipper. “You know, a tall, dramatic-looking woman with the right complexion. The color makes the rest of us look washed out. I tried it on once and couldn’t find myself in the mirror.” Here it was then, my coloring was different than the rest of theirs.
After paying for it, I ran down a pair of strappy black heels on the sales rack at Macy’s, and a beaded, black choker reduced to $39 in the jewelry department. The whole ordeal had been accomplished in forty-seven minutes. My credit card hadn’t had a workout like this in ages. Bill would have to take notice. Something had gone wrong in my grand plan of avoiding feelings like this, of maintaining the upper hand in romance.
Bunny was waiting at the elevator.
“What did you sign us up for?” she asked as we walked toward the store. She looked critically at her hands. “They could start at the bottom of me and work straight up.” Looking around nervously, she added. “I’d rather be at the corner beauty shop. Joyce’s. I feel totally out of place here. You should only come here after seeing Joyce first.”
We both looked up as a perfectly groomed woman headed toward the back of the shop. “What could she possibly be having done?” Bunny fretted. “See what I mean?”
“Maybe she broke a nail?”
Bunny was right. Perhaps I should’ve worn the sharkskin dress for our appointment. That would’ve won respect.
At one point, an hour or so into it, we lay side by side covered in goo.
“We haven’t been together this much since you were in fifth grade,” Bunny said. What sounded sentimental was really observational. “Remember the time you invited those girls over to watch Michael Jackson’s new video. What was it called?”
“‘Thriller.’”
I’d been thinking about it too. I was the first kid in our neighborhood to have MTV since Bunny was a TVholic. We may not have had many clothes, but we had cable. Having MTV early made me briefly popular. Bunny threw me a big party for the “Thriller” debut, doing a campy version of the moonwalk for the giggling girls. I could never decide if the girls found Bunny ridiculous or fun, but any attempt to exclude Bunny from the festivities was eventually overridden by me when I couldn’t think of how to entertain my guests. Sooner or later, I’d sneak out to the kitchen and beg Bunny to take over, exhausted by my own feeble attempts to host a party.
Bunny obliged, and I found myself resenting her ability to make fun. Had those girls with their stiff, blown-back bangs, stone-washed jeans, and knee-length sweaters been more Bunny’s pals than mine? Once the MTV craze dissipated, or when the other kids all had cable too, Bunny couldn’t hold their interest either. At some point, Hart women lost their allure.
“Didn’t he seem like the coolest guy?” Bunny was saying. “Those girls were all in love with a black guy, but then he went and made himself white. Funny, huh?”
I was taken aback by Bunny’s words. Our conversation of the night before about my father had made no impact on her. Bunny didn’t hear the eeriness of her own words. Hal Hart had made himself white for a long time.
Thirty years later and color had still mattered to Michael Jackson. Imagine photographing his face. It would be hard to make it look like more than smoke and mirrors. It suddenly occurred to me; he’d looked much like Bill’s dead men—his eyes seemed like opaque marbles—even before he died.
Three hours later, we walked out of the spa: smoothed, waxed, kneaded, buffed, polished, and laughing. It was among the best days we’d ever spent together. Maybe the bilious water of our joint past was now under the bridge. Now we had an explanation for Hal Hart’s desertion, one that didn’t fault us. Soon I’d find good old “Howl” and make him acknowledge it. I’d know when the time was right.
I’d tell Bill too, couldn’t wait to see his face, in fact. “I am not a white woman exploiting black men. You had me wrong.” That’s what I’d say. But I’d probably still seem white to him.
“Let’s stop for a quick bite at P.F. Chang’s,” Bunny suggested. “My treat.”
We were headed toward the restaurant, passing Crate and Barrel’s three-story fortress, when I saw Bill coming out of Tiffany’s. He had an attractive woman on his arm—an African-American woman. I quickly nudged Bunny into Crate and Barrel, heart pounding as I waited while the couple passed. They were laughing, the woman leaning into Bill in an intimate way. I watched frozen as the woman reached up and adjusted Bill’s Panama hat. He’d lost weight; he looked good. I continued to watch in stunned silence as Bill and his companion made their way across the floor to a Caribbean-style bistro and disappeared inside.
“So did you want to get something in here? Is that why you pushed me in?” Bunny was asking me when I could hear again. “I could use new placemats. What do you think of these? Violet, are you listening? What about these?”
Detroit News: Derek Olsen, age 23, of St. Clair Shores. Suddenly. Beloved son of Susan and the late Robert. Beloved brother of Amy and uncle to Conor and Madeleine. Visitation 3-9 Tuesday at the Charles Barton Funeral Home in St. Clair Shores. 32907 Jefferson Ave. Funeral Services Wednesday at St. Nicholas’ Catholic Church. 19045 Mack Ave., Grosse Pointe Woods. Interment at the Overlook Cemetery, 33300 Gratiot Avenue, Roseville, MI.
(September 2011)
I made a quick excuse to my mother and ran for the parking lot. People made way for me as if I were a careening bus. I wasn’t crying yet, but was damned close to it—had a funny, unfamiliar taste in my throat; my heart pounded.
So he’d chosen an African-American woman to stroll through the mall with. He chose a black woman to hang from his arm in daylight and in a public space. Had we ever been together in a place like Somerset Mall, where people might see us? Or was I only for the nighttime when we were unlikely to be spotted?
Did it always have to be a
bout race? If I lived in Seattle or Minneapolis instead of Detroit, would I be free of it? Or was it about Asians, Somalians, or Bosnians in other places? Would there always be someone to look down on or up to because of where they came from, the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes?
Who was the woman on Bill’s arm? Looking like she belonged there, like she’d been with him forever. There was something familiar about her. Then it hit me: she might be the sister of the murdered rapper, Cajuan Grace. Their faces were nearly identical. I had spent enough time with Cajuan to recognize that bone structure, the high cheekbones, for instance. Hadn’t her name been dropped on several occasions: was she the one who knew about diabetes; the one he’d asked about photographing Cajuan? Maybe I saw her hanging around Bill’s at the time of the burial and maybe once more recently. Hadn’t I heard him talking to her on his cell a few weeks ago? Had he mentioned her to me a couple of other times? A nurse maybe? More than a couple times, now that I thought about it. What was her name? It was horrible not knowing who she was. I’d google Cajuan’s obit as soon as I got home. One of the articles would’ve mentioned her—survived by a sister. Why didn’t I read the newspaper?
Damn, and double damn. How long had this been going on? I tried to remember when the feeling of what—remoteness—began. It’d been gradual. Events always seemed to intervene in our relationship. I’d been in a perpetual rush lately too, barely any time to think about our quasi-estrangement. Hard to remember what Bill knew about Derek Olsen’s death, for instance. When was the last time I spoke to him? Filled him in on what I was doing? Would there ever be an opportunity to share the news of my father with him? How would he react to my new “blackness”?
One fact was certain—I’d have to find a way to see him that didn’t involve death—death in any form. Remind him of what we’d had before all of this began. Remind myself of it too. In certain ways we’d become closer through sharing this project. Gotten beyond the pure sexuality of the first months. Could there be more? Was that why that dame was on his arm—he wanted more? More than I gave him? Maybe he thought he could only get it from a black woman?
Shot In Detroit Page 21
