by Pearl Cleage
“How old is she?”
“Medea or the girlfriend?”
“The girlfriend, Mafeenie!”
“Thirty-six.” Although I hated to admit it, she did have a point. Medea’s violent madness is completely explainable during the passionately messy childbearing years, but postmenopause, the killing of the children is just bad mothering. “She wants to play the role herself.”
“Is she any good?”
“Not that good,” I said, hoping it was true. “Howard suggested this might be the ideal time to let them miss me for a while, so I’ve got a month or so off, and I thought since you couldn’t come here last summer, the mountain would come to Muhammad.”
“For a month?”
She sounded less than enthusiastic about the prospect, but I chose to interpret her tone as simple surprise. “Too much time or not enough?”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “It’s fine. It’s just that I’m working these crazy hours at the vet center and I gave up my apartment, so you know…”
She let that “you know” dangle in the air between us, and I realized that she didn’t want me to stay with her. Too bad. There was no way I was going to go to Atlanta specifically to see my granddaughter and check into one of those elaborate Atlanta tourist hotels or camp out at a sad little motel near the airport, full of the ghosts of disappointed business travelers and the women who love them.
“Your mother told me you were house-sitting a mansion,” I said. “Can you put me up?”
“It’s not exactly a mansion. It’s one of those West End gingerbreads.”
West End was a southwest Atlanta community primarily known for three things: first, several blocks of perfectly restored Victorian homes, complete with the latticework around the front and back porches which had earned them the name gingerbreads; second, the five schools of the Atlanta University Center, including Spelman College, from which Zora should have graduated last May; and, third, Blue Hamilton, their homegrown godfather who had abandoned a promising career as an R&B crooner to oversee the neighborhood’s twenty-odd blocks and guarantee the peace and security of all the people who settled there. The violent scandal that had splashed on Zora’s feet last spring was an aberration in a neighborhood that was usually so peaceful it boasted a twenty-four-hour beauty shop where clients came and went at all hours with never a thought that they might not be safe. I had a whole scrapbook full of pictures of an apartment Zora had there for the last two years, including some of her working in the big garden out back. She loved that place, but she said it had too many memories so she was looking for a new one.
“Do they really have a pool?” I said. Jasmine had described it in great detail. Something about a mermaid mosaic on the bottom that had to be seen to be believed.
“Yeah.” Zora sounded a lot less enthusiastic than her mother had.
“Has it been warm enough there for you to get in it?” It was the middle of February, but Atlanta is known for its mild winters, especially these days when winter was becoming an increasingly distant memory.
“It’s heated.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Well, you lucked out, then. I remember how much you loved the pool at that villa Howard had in Nice. The house was an absolute wreck, as I recall, but we couldn’t hardly get you out of that pool long enough to eat and sleep. I thought your fingers were going to be permanently pruned.”
In the silence that greeted this grandmotherly attempt at sharing a treasured memory of one of our best summers, I heard the tinkling ice in Zora’s glass again and the faint twittering of the ever-excited little people as Glinda the Good Witch made it abundantly clear that Dorothy was right: They weren’t in Kansas anymore.
“Are you still swimming every day?”
“Not really,” she said. “I don’t have time, you know…”
That you know hung there just like the other one. “Well, I’ll swim in it. How’s that?”
“Fine, I guess,” she said with an audible sigh. “When are you coming?”
Her lack of enthusiasm was starting to really bother me. I decided to cut through the bullshit before I got mad, never a good option, especially when dealing with ex-lovers, bad directors, and fragile grandbabies. I took a deep breath.
“Listen, sweetie,” I said, “I know you’ve had a lot going on in your life and—”
“That’s a nice way to put it,” she said, and laughed a little, but it wasn’t a good laugh. “You sound like Mom.”
She meant “well meaning, but clueless.”
“Well, we’re both a little worried about you if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t mean anything,” she said, sounding exhausted and annoyed. “I’m just saying…”
Her voice trailed off and whatever she started saying remained unsaid.
“I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to give me an honest answer.”
“Okay.”
“Is this a bad time for a visit?”
She exhaled again, loud enough for me to hear it. I waited, hoping she wouldn’t ask me not to come. I know I’d told her I wanted an honest answer, but only if it was in the affirmative.
“There’s no bad time for you to visit, Mafeenie. You know that.”
“Thank you, darlin’,” I said, relieved.
“So when are you coming?”
“Next week, if that’s okay.”
“Still traveling incognito?”
I laughed. “Old habits are hard to break.”
It’s not really that I travel incognito. It’s just that I’ve been moving around the world on my own for so long, I’ve got it down to a science. One of the things I eliminated early on was the airport greeting. As environments go, airports are among the worst when it comes to saying hello or goodbye to someone you love. Everybody’s rushing around, security is directing you one way or another, and the lighting is awful. Under those conditions, I don’t want to meet anybody and I don’t want to be met. My preference is to give people a rough idea of when I’m coming and then call them when I light somewhere. That way, I can move on my own rhythms, changing and adjusting as the mood strikes me without feeling any pressure to arrive before the flowers wilt or in time for the midnight show.
Whenever Zora came to see me, we always traveled this way. We’d show up in Paris or Madrid or Havana and call my friends from our hotel. They invariably chided me for not letting them meet us at the airport. I would apologize and tell them to join us for dinner, where all would be forgiven before we had opened the second bottle of champagne. Zora would have a Shirley Temple.
“I’ll call you when I get in.”
“My schedule is crazy at the center,” she said, “and sometimes I have to turn off my cellphone, so if you don’t reach me, just catch a cab to the new Paschal’s and I’ll meet you there.”
The old Paschal’s restaurant had been a popular Hunter Street watering hole for forty years before they moved to a new location a few blocks from the concrete and glass monstrosity that is the Georgia Dome. Legend has it that the late Mr. Paschal single-handedly kept the Atlanta office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from starving to death by keeping them supplied with his famous chicken sandwiches whenever the staff was broke and hungry, which was often.
“No problem,” I said. “That way I can get a glass of champagne and something to eat until I lay eyes on you.”
I could hear the faint cackling of the Wicked Witch of the West, who had just landed in Munchkin Land in a puff of green smoke, highly pissed, and looking for her sister.
“Get back to your movie,” I said.
“Travel safe,” Zora said.
“Don’t worry. I’ll just click my heels together three times like I always do. Love you!”
“I love you. Mafeenie?”
“Yes, darlin’?”
“I really am glad you’re coming.”
“Me, too,” I said. There was nothing on Zora so broke we cou
ldn’t fix it. Together. That’s what grandmothers do.
THREE
Arriving at the airport early to comply with all the new regulations and security measures, I breezed through all checkpoints, flashing my passport like the good American citizen that I am. When I presented myself at the gate for my flight to Atlanta, the agent shyly requested an autograph and told me the flight was almost empty so she could upgrade me to first class. I signed: To Chloe, with great appreciation for your kind assistance. Peace & Love, Josephine Evans.
“My granddad used to sign his letters like that back in the sixties,” she said, smiling as she tucked the paper safely away in her uniform pocket.
“We all did,” I said. “Some of us just never stopped.”
She walked me all the way onto the plane and handed me over to the smiling young women who were greeting the first-class passengers and offering them pillows and a beverage before the back cabin had even begun to board. I settled into an aisle seat with no one scheduled to claim the window beside me and accepted a glass of champagne and a pillow. There were only three other people in first class and a dozen in coach. There was a man one row up and across the aisle from me who ordered a double scotch on the rocks, drank it, and fell asleep almost before the captain turned off the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign. The bright-eyed flight attendant tucked a blanket around him like he was a toddler known for kicking off his covers and asked me if I’d like a magazine. Of the ones she offered, Vogue and Vanity Fair were the ones I chose, but I wasn’t really interested. I flipped through a preview of spring fashions that was heavy on baby doll dresses and ballet flats, scanned an article on “the new Hollywood,” which looked a lot more diverse than the old Hollywood but had the same penchant for big-breasted blondes with bee-stung lips and heart-shaped behinds.
I closed the magazines and snuggled a little deeper into my soft leather seat. I wasn’t really sleepy, but it was late, and the hum of the jet engines and the soft snoring of the man-baby across the aisle were hypnotic. I turned off my reading light, leaned back, and let my mind mull over the events of the last few days. The truth is, this wasn’t the first time I had felt that anti-American thing nipping at my heels. It’s been building ever since the invasion of Iraq when the president started trying to bend the rest of the world to his will the way Rudolph Valentino’s tyrannical father does in that silent movie The Sheik. It’s one of my favorite oldies. Zora loves it, too.
It takes place in some unnamed desert somewhere. At the beginning, the dad is really pissed off about something, so he takes a length of pipe that just happens to be lying around his tent and folds it over like a pipe cleaner. This gesture is intended to demonstrate to his son, played to smoldering perfection by Rudy himself, who is in charge. Valentino, of course, takes the pipe, dark-rimmed eyes blazing in defiance, and straightens it right out again to show his father that times have changed around the oasis.
I think that’s what happened to our president, too. After 9/11, he started bending every pipe in sight, while people whose blazing eyes have nothing to do with the skill of makeup artists and creative lighting, bent them right back. I was in Paris doing one more Medea just before the invasion, and there were massive antiwar demonstrations every day. Early in my career, I played the idealistic Princess Antigone, up against the amazingly stubborn King Creon, more times than I can remember, so I had a clear understanding of the implacability of power. Watching the news conferences and angry speeches, I knew there was a strong chance that we were already beyond the possibility of diplomacy and persuasion.
At first, Howard and I just watched from the balcony of the hotel, but after a couple of days, I decided I had to be a part of it. Howard, who had only come in for a long weekend to see the show and do some shopping, thought I was crazy for getting involved. When I reminded him that it was, after all, our country against whom they were protesting, he just snorted.
“Speak for yourself, Miss Betsy Ross,” he said. “If I wanted to march up and down the street, hollering at white folks, I would have kept my black ass at home in the first place. No thank you!”
So we arranged to meet for dinner after the show, and Howard went back to catching up on his beauty sleep. I joined the throngs of men, women, and children who were carrying signs that said, “Stay out of Iraq!” and “U.S. Out of the Middle East!” and some fairly angry things about George Bush, his father, and one about his mother that I won’t repeat since she never ran for office and so is of no concern to me. They were also carrying posters with various photographs of the president, sometimes altered so that he had little devil horns like goat bumps on his forehead or blood dripping off his little pointed teeth. There were some classic peace signs, white on black background, and one saying “war” in a red circle with a line through it.
I fell in with a group of young women who had skipped the day’s classes at their university to join the marchers. We all got along great. Everybody spoke English and French so we could really talk in both languages, which we did. When people recognized me, they would smile and applaud, or come over to shake my hand, or take a picture and compliment the artist while striding along beside the activist. That was back when the demonstrators were really mad at our government, but they still had faith in us to change it, which we did. But people around the world still don’t see enough evidence of that change, which is why they’re losing patience with us.
So I wasn’t really surprised by what happened at the funeral, or by the board’s decision to replace me. It hurt my feelings more than anything else. But now all that is in the capable hands of Howard Denmond, whom I trust to make it right before I run through my savings and have to figure out how to make an honest living doing something other than acting. Howard was right. We had been through all manner of dramas over the past twenty-plus years, and he has never let me down.
Comforted by that thought, I must have dozed off because when I woke up, they had lowered the lights and the only activity in the cabin was taking place a few rows ahead of me, where a young couple with identical shiny blond heads was giggling together between kisses. From where I was sitting in the dark across the aisle behind them, I could see the boy whispering in her ear and hear the girl laughing softly as she shushed him. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips in an urgent, sensual way that made me know exactly what was coming next. And why not? Making love on airplanes is practically a sexual rite of passage in the modern world, and this flight was so empty, they didn’t even have to crowd into the tiny bathroom to escape their fellow passengers’ prying eyes. The snorer had not moved a muscle and I’m sure they had no idea I was even awake. The girl’s head dropped out of sight and the boy groaned softly and leaned his blond head back against the seat.
I was never a big sex-on-the-plane kind of girl, although I had my moments. It’s much easier for women to give pleasure in such close quarters than to receive it. Upright airplane seats seem tailor-made for fellatio, while trying to find a way to reciprocate would challenge even the most determined and flexible suitor. I knew I was invading their privacy by not turning away, but somehow I felt like they didn’t really care. Half the thrill of this kind of thing is the idea that somebody might be watching.
After a few minutes, the boy let out a little gurgling half groan and pressed his head against the seat. For a moment, neither one moved; then the girl sat up, pushed her hair behind her ears, and looked around. When she saw that I was awake, she grinned conspiratorially. I grinned back just as her beau pulled her back down into his arms for a long grateful kiss.
I was grateful, too. Not for a chance to play the voyeur at thirty thousand feet, but because that’s one of the things I really like about people. We don’t care how many rules you make, we’re going to find a way to fall in love and have sex on airplanes and make babies and laugh and cry and live free. That’s just something we do, and all the wars and all the governments and all the armies you can put together to stop us won’t make one bit of difference. Especially when you’re movi
ng along effortlessly at five hundred miles an hour and the flight attendants are half dozing and the cool-looking older lady that’s watching has probably seen it all and done the rest. That’s how she got to be so cool.
FOUR
Paschal’s had changed its location, but the food was exactly the same: high in calories, high in cholesterol, and absolutely irresistible. My flight arrived on time and I caught a cab into the city, arriving at just before nine. I left a message on Zora’s cellphone, as instructed, and took a small corner table in the bar area where they had the television turned to CNN. I ordered a glass of champagne, but when I hadn’t heard from Zora by the time I finished it, the smiling waiter who said his name was MacArthur, “like the general,” had no problem serving me the same great meal I would have gotten in the dining room.
A half hour later, while I waited for my peach cobbler and a cup of coffee, I thumbed through a copy of Dig It!, the homegrown gossip sheet that had been Zora’s nemesis since her name surfaced in the scandal. Jasmine had told me how furious Zora had been to find herself in its pages, but I had never seen a copy before. It was free from the box right outside the front door, sandwiched between The New York Times and The Atlanta Sentinel, both of which were sold out. Dig It! was free. The paper made its money in ads. Looking Good While Being Bad! the headline screamed across the front in big red letters. As I flipped through it, there were many people I didn’t recognize. I wondered if that was because I’d been away so long or just that so many of these “celebrities” looked barely old enough to vote, much less to be called stars. Most of them seemed to come from the world of very recent pop culture with an emphasis on reality television and rap music.
I was beginning to wonder if Zora had gotten my message, when I turned the page, and there she was, splashed across the cover feature on “Looking Good While Being Bad.” They got that right. In every photograph of her, Zora looked absolutely beautiful. There she was, dancing with an attractive young man in a crowded nightclub. There she was, having drinks with him the same night, smiling seductively. She obviously had no idea she was being photographed. There were also several of her entering or leaving the campus at Spelman, wearing huge sunglasses and shielding her face with her hands. One photographer even secretly snapped her leaving the West End News. In that shot, she looked drawn and tense.
