by Pearl Cleage
“What do you want to do?”
Once again, Abbie hit the damn nail on the head. She knew it, too. I could tell from the grin that was slowly spreading across her face. What do I want to do? Be invited back to do one more Medea in a long line of Medeas? Work with François on something we had already explored fully, and then some? Throw cold water on his girlfriend and hope she’d melt like the witch in The Wizard of Oz?
“I have no idea what I want,” I answered her honestly, surprised at how comfortable I was with such real uncertainty.
Abbie nodded. “Well, you’ll figure it out.”
“I better figure it out,” I said. “I’m out of work, in debt, and in doubt.”
“You left out the most important thing,” Abbie said, picking up a calla lily to put in our cart.
“And what is that?”
“Free,” she said happily. “You’re absolutely free.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Zora and I left work on the house to Victor for the day and went over to the antiwar demonstration in West End. It was an overcast morning and both of us were quiet on our way to the park. I don’t know what I expected, but the crowd was pitiful. A few old radicals, some students, a few curious bystanders, and a homeless man whose rest we were disturbing. We were gathering in the community park on Abernathy, but nobody seemed to be in charge. There was a small stage set up with a podium and a microphone, but no one had approached it, even to play roadie and say “test, test,” to see if it was working. Everybody was kind of standing around waiting for some more people to show up and feeling a little foolish for being there.
I felt a little silly myself. Where were all the throngs of angry, politicized people, come to do battle with their government and emerge righteously victorious? These folks looked frail and tentative. There was none of the energy of the antiwar demonstrations in Paris and Amsterdam. There was none of the feeling here that our presence as citizens could really affect anything our government did one way or another.
“They should have tried to flash it,” Zora said, breaking into my woolgathering.
“What?”
“Where you put it on the Net that we’re all going to gather at a certain time and place and do a certain thing and then go home.”
“You call that flashing?” I said. My use of the word ran more toward seedy men in trench coats, opening them to treat innocent passersby to a glimpse of the family jewels.
“Not flashing,” she said, smiling as she always did at my continuing ignorance when it came to all things Internet. “Flash mobs. It’s just something people were doing for a while. They would all show up at a store or something and just do something together.”
“Something like what?” I said, watching the homeless man gathering up his things, muttering darkly about us all being a bunch of communists.
“I don’t know. Clap their hands, sing something. They went to a toy store in New York and everybody gathered in front of this big elephant they had and bowed down to it.”
“That’s crazy.”
Zora shrugged. “It wouldn’t have to be for something silly. People could come together for something like this. Something good.”
I nodded. “Well, then I’m sorry they didn’t do it, too.”
When Abbie and Aretha pulled up together in the truck, they saw us immediately in the small group and waved. Zora and I waved back as they got out and started in our direction. Aretha had on her overalls and work boots. Abbie was wearing an orange jacket and purple pants. She had on turquoise Chinese shoes with pink roses embroidered on the toes. In the middle of more conservatively dressed people, she looked like a tropical bird that had just flown in to jazz up the proceedings.
“Who’s in charge?” she said, after we all hugged our greetings and she had a chance to look around. Four or five more women arrived, two carrying signs that said WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.
“You are,” I said, only half kidding. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“No problem,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation and headed for the stage, which was really just a slightly elevated platform.
Zora reached into her bag for her technology and started taping.
Abbie walked up to the mike and smiled at the valiant few. “Good morning,” she said. “I’m Abbie Allen Browning. I am an American citizen and I am against all the wars that are currently being waged in my name around the world.”
There was scattered applause. Aretha and I clapped loudly and Aretha even whistled like people do at baseball games. I smiled to myself. Abbie was working her citizenship show again.
“I am a peace activist,” Abbie said. “That means I am always active for peace. As a citizen of a country at war, I am determined to show by my words and my actions that I do not support violence as a solution to human problems.”
More scattered applause. Still sparse, but people were moving forward a little at a time. Abbie smiled encouragingly.
“So does anybody else want to say anything about why you’re here?”
Everybody looked around like kids do when the teacher asks a question about an assignment nobody’s read. I looked around, too, but Aretha was already moving to the microphone. Abbie smiled at her and stepped aside. Aretha smiled back and faced her fellow citizens.
“I’m Aretha Hargrove and I’m here because my daughter Joyce Ann is only four and I want to make a better world for her to grow up in.”
Aretha moved over next to Abbie and they both looked at me. I headed for the mike.
“I’m Josephine Evans and I’m here because people in other countries need to know that not all Americans support the war.”
I stood there for a minute, wondering if there was something else I should say, but another woman was already heading for the mike, so I stepped aside.
“My name is Margaret Hudson,” she said. “I’m here because my daughter is stationed in Iraq and nobody can explain to me what she’s doing there other than getting shot at by a whole bunch of people she doesn’t even know.”
People were starting to line up at the foot of the stage. The impromptu testimonials were starting to draw a modest crowd. I looked at Abbie and she grinned at me.
“Be careful what you ask for,” she whispered.
“My name is Harold Hoskins,” said a man with dreadlocks and an old green army jacket. “I’m here because I was in Nam and this is the same damn thing all over again, ’scuse my French, ladies.”
“Tell the truth, brother!” a man said from the front of the platform. “Tell the truth!”
As each person said why they were there, they joined the group of us standing with Abbie, nodding at each other like you do at Sunday-morning church services.
“My name is Tamara Williams and I’m here because my brother is in Afghanistan.”
“My name is Edward Dennis and I’m here because we got no business over there in the first place.”
“Excuse me,” the woman behind me whispered as we applauded Mr. Dennis. “Don’t you have a messed-up house on Martin Luther King?”
I turned to look into her face. “Yes,” I said, wondering how she knew me.
“Well, I think it’s great what you’re doing,” she said. “It’s about time somebody took a stand. We watch you all the time.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Keep up the good work.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We will.”
By the time we got to the end of the line of people who wanted to testify, there were almost fifty people on the stage and everybody was grinning like we had just marched over to the Pentagon and shaken our finger in some general’s shocked face. I guess we hadn’t done much if you measure the morning objectively. Gathered up a few people for an antiwar demonstration in a neighborhood where almost nobody seemed to notice. Nobody except those of us who showed up like the good citizens Abbie keeps telling us we have to be and spoke up for peace. In public. In the company of our neighbors. One by one until we all stood together. Stronger,
even if just for that moment. A little stronger.
Zora was the last one in line, her technology still in hand. She swept it over the group and then stepped up to the mike.
“I’m Zora Evans,” she said. “And I’m here because there’s no place else I’d rather be.”
FIFTY-SIX
Miss Thing, the town is on fire!” Howard said. “I thought I said do nothing until you hear from me and now I get back from Paris to find all hell has broken loose.”
“Good,” I said. “They deserve it. Welcome back.”
“Welcome back? Do you know what this means?”
“It means I told the truth and let the devil take hindmost.”
“A charming saying from the old country,” Howard said, “but hardly relevant. The board is furious about the story that fool wrote after he interviewed you.”
“They’re furious? I’m the one who should be furious. Medea, Howard? They’re going to let her close with Medea?”
“Of course they’re wrong, and trust me, there was no way it would have happened, before this! Now it will be a miracle if they don’t set your things out on the street!”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“They are demanding an apology, Miss Thing. And right away!”
“An apology? For what?”
“Oh, maybe for calling them all a bunch of idiots who wouldn’t know good theater if it bit them on the ass!”
“That’s not what I said!”
“Then what did you say, sweetie? And make it good. I’ve got to do some serious damage control if we’re going to pull this thing out. First thing you have to say is you’re sorry!”
The idea was inconceivable. “I can’t apologize, Howard. Everything I said was true.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and then he sighed. “I know that, and you know that, but truth ain’t all there is to it, sweetie. They’re positioning you as the aging American diva who doesn’t want to pass the baton to the new generation.”
I winced. “An aging American diva?”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s a mean old world, but if you want this gig to support you, and me, in our old age, you gotta bend a little.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Are you sulking?”
“She told the man I had been too old for Medea for more than a decade,” I said. “Don’t I get to respond?”
“She would have told the man you had two heads if she thought it would get her a lead,” Howard said. “And of course you get to respond, sweetie pie, every time you set foot on that stage and not a moment before.”
“I just don’t understand why she had to say all that. She made me sound like a washed-up hag.”
“She made herself sound like an ungrateful wretch,” he said. “But that’s just the way of it. Remember us when we were thirty?”
“We were dedicated idealists,” I said. “We wanted a theater that would change people’s lives so they would change the world!”
“We were ruthless little fiends,” Howard said, “who wanted nothing more than a chance to holler our unappreciated genius at the moon.”
He was right, of course, but I wasn’t that way anymore. I didn’t deserve this.
“I miss you so much,” I said. “Am I ever going to get to come home?”
“I miss you, too. Don’t worry. I’ll figure out something. Just don’t do any more interviews, okay?”
“I still want that, you know?”
“Want what, sweetie?”
“That howling at the moon thing.”
“And you shall have it,” he said soothingly. “I promise.”
“I believe you,” I said, because he expected me to, but the truth was, I was beginning to have my doubts.
“Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“Your genius will never be unappreciated. You are still, and always will be, a star.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Betty Causey called to tell me that Daisy Turner, one of her neighbors, got robbed last night. They cut her alarm and came through an unlocked back window. They didn’t have to break anything to get in, so the woman slept through the whole thing. She didn’t even know she’d been robbed until she got up this morning and realized her television set was gone. The one in her bedroom. The thought that somebody had been in her room scared Daisy so badly she fainted and hit her head on her dresser. Now she was staying at Betty’s, scared to go home, vowing to take whatever she could get for what she was now calling “that little broke-up piece of house” and go move in with her daughter.
Although Betty said that wasn’t likely since they had never gotten along very well, and probably weren’t going to start now, the point was everybody was scared, and Betty thought I ought to know. I thanked her and she told me there was one more thing she wanted to tell me. Greer Woodruff had called Daisy yesterday to repeat her offer to buy the house. Daisy had refused and gone to bed early, but Betty didn’t think it was a coincidence that the break-in had happened later the same night, and what did I think? I told Betty I didn’t believe in coincidence. She said she didn’t either.
This was not working out like it was supposed to at all. I only came here to check on Zora and wait out the storm back home. After that, my round-trip ticket was supposed to take me back to my real life. The one I made up from scratch and nurtured and shaped and poked and polished until it looked just like me. And now, here I was, working like a young slave, paying a homeless guy to live at my house so he could earn his way back into his mama’s heart, and trying to help save a neighborhood that couldn’t be saved.
The real problem was none of this stuff was going to help us attract any buyers. People weren’t watching us on the Internet because they wanted to live here. They were watching us because they were glad they didn’t.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Zora tried to talk me out of it, but I knew Greer Woodruff was the kind of woman who probably liked to get an early start, so I drove over to her office at seven thirty. I pulled into the almost empty parking lot and went upstairs. The glass door was still locked, so I pounded on it as hard as I could without breaking it, to let her know she had company.
Greer Woodruff emerged from her inner sanctum with a small frown to let whoever was knocking at her door with such determination know that she did not appreciate being disturbed. When she saw me, the frown got bigger.
“Ms. Evans,” she said, opening the door a little, but not inviting me inside. “You’re out early.”
“They know it’s you,” I said.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sure you do.” I stepped into the office even though she didn’t want to step aside to let me pass, content to let me stand in the hallway and plead my case. “And this is where it’s going to stop.”
“Do you want to tell me what you are raving about?”
“I’m not raving,” I said. “I’m talking about terrorizing old women in their beds.”
“As you recall, I told you there were other people interested in those properties. Perhaps you ought to take your complaint up with them.”
“I’d be glad to,” I said. “Who are we talking about?”
She narrowed her eyes slightly and I could see her debating how she wanted to play this. “You know I had pretty much convinced everybody to sell before you got here, and now, all of a sudden, people are canceling contracts and having second thoughts.”
“Second thoughts? None of these women wanted to sell their houses any more than I did.”
“That’s their choice,” she said.
“Then why don’t you let them make it? There must be other properties your client could buy. This city is full of vacant houses.”
She smiled her non-smile. “But that would be a different deal that would in no way benefit me or my company.”
There was not a shred of compassion in her voice. “Is that all that matters to you?”
Her face
was hard and her tone was cold. “The thing about you is that you’re used to lots of options. Lots of offers to do what you want to do. That’s not my experience. I’ve had to make my own luck. Opportunities like this don’t come along often at our age.”
If she thought we could bond on the basis of our proximity to the golden years, she was as wrong as she could be.
“This is the deal that will secure my future and the future of my company. The one that makes up for all those years when the boys wouldn’t let me pull up a chair at the table. When they made their deals on the golf course and expected me to be a minor partner whenever they decided to throw me a crumb.”
This was a woman with a lot of axes to grind. It was clear that our little houses were having to bear the weight of a lot of other stuff that didn’t have anything to do with us or our properties.
“This is the deal that will guarantee that I’m not one of those broke old ladies who lived longer than they were supposed to and don’t have anyplace to go to come in out of the rain,” she said. “It can do the same thing for you.”
“I’m not broke and I’m not old,” I said.
She smiled as if to say not yet. “At this point, I am prepared to offer you considerably more than our initial discussions might have indicated.”
Her partners must really be leaning on her. “How much more?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
The irony of it was that if she had made the same offer the first time I came into her office, I would have taken it, grabbed Zora, and headed back to Amsterdam in style. But there was no way to take it now, even if she had offered a hundred thousand. She had made herself the villain of this story we were telling. My character was the shero. That meant I could never, ever make a deal with the devil. Even a bad script would never make a mistake like that.
