Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

“ICE is serious about this one,” Cassie said. “This isn’t going to go away.”

  “Ice?” I said.

  “Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We call them ICE because they’re coldhearted when it comes to this stuff.”

  She muttered that last part, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to have heard it. So I just said, “Oh.”

  “All these terms are explained in the material I gave you to read,” she added sharply. “You really need to read it.”

  But then she patted my hand in a conciliatory way. She said that if she was going to save me, she needed to know everything. So she gave me an assignment.

  That is why I’m writing this, you see. She told me to record every single thing that happened to me from the moment I was photographed splayed across the lap of the sitting (and obviously seated) US president, through all the conspiracy theories about my incredibly short marriage, and right up to the exact moment I—in her words—“nearly killed” my ex-husband on live television.

  “And if you could write a coherent explanation of why you, the Little Miss All-American Girl-Next-Door Movie Star, never bothered to become a US citizen,” she continued, letting the sarcasm back into her voice, “and why you pled guilty to a felony we’re now claiming actually wasn’t, that would be nice, too.”

  I bristled, but nodded.

  “I’m doing my best, Addison,” she said. “But you have to help.”

  I nodded again. As she left, I made a great show of gathering up the paper and marker (no sharp points allowed here). But once she was gone, I decided I would not confine myself to the topics she had specified. If I’m going to write it down, then I’m going to write it all down. Because my life, despite her snotty aside, really is the American story. Cute little immigrant girl with a dream come true? Well, that’s just dying to be told, isn’t it?

  All I ever wanted was to exceed my parents’ modest ambitions for me and to become an American icon, a symbol of the sort of good fortune that follows those who apply themselves. Sort of like Donald Trump, only with better hair.

  And abs.

  And taste.

  Sure, I’ve had a bit of a bad run lately. But that only makes the story better, doesn’t it? It will only make my comeback more impressive!

  And I will come back. You mark my words.

  So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll start at the beginning. I’m sure Cassie will understand. Besides, it’s all pertinent, isn’t it? Everything I am today, including this current unpleasantness, is a product of everything I’ve ever done. That’s the American way of looking at it, I’m certain of that.

  I did not attain all that I’ve attained by being lackadaisical or halfhearted. I’ve thrown myself into every task with unquestioning dedication—whether making out with George Clooney, launching a quirky morning talk show, or embracing the ten-thousand-steps fitness craze. (I read about it on a marvelous Web site. You wear a pedometer constantly and shoot for ten thousand steps a day. But I set my goal at twice that and was delighted to find that it really worked. If diligent, I could, once or twice a month, have an entire handful of M&M’s with no noticeable ill effects—although I did need to be especially stringent with the astringent the next day or my forehead would positively glisten.)

  So I will apply myself to this writing task with equal ardor. It all began for me, let’s see, when I was six and I got my name. Yes, I suppose that’s right. Or, arguably, six years earlier than that—you know, when I was born.

  Chapter 2

  I have noticed that most Americans do not think much about the circumstances of their birth, much less their genealogy. My high school boyfriend once told me that his ancestors were “European or something.” And none of my friends could name their great-grandparents, much less recite their lineage back through seven generations as children are taught to do in my parents’ cultures. They had no idea who was the first in their family to be a US citizen, and they did not appear to have given any thought to how significant that designation is.

  But while Americans aren’t particularly interested in their own genealogy, they are often quite interested in mine. People look at my dark olive skin, my thick, deep black hair, my angular features, and they wonder: Filipino? Native American? Greek? Egyptian? Angelina Jolie with a tan? (And better eye makeup, obviously.) My agent has always said my uncertain ethnicity, what he calls my “exotic” appearance, is my secret weapon, my key to stardom. I represent, according to him, a “glorious blending” of the human race, a composite sketch, of sorts, of all humanity. My skintone embodies the beautiful Amber Glow shade of foundation in CoverGirl’s Queen Collection. Latifah said so herself! All of this interesting “women of color” loveliness is only enhanced, according to my agent, by my inappropriate Irish name. He says it gives me an air of mystery.

  I guess he’s right. People often do seem mystified. Just the other day, while working out during exercise time, I caught other inmates discussing me. I was doing my usual chin-ups in the prison yard, located on the rooftop of the eight-floor prison, when I overheard a convicted embezzler giving a new girl the lowdown.

  “That one over there,” said the embezzler, “is Addison McGhee. You know, that funny-looking black nurse on ER.”

  I glanced their way just in time to see the new inmate squint at me and wrinkle her nose. I could see the Statue of Liberty behind her. It was very picturesque.

  “Addison McGhee?” the new inmate repeated with surprise. “I always thought she was Hispanic. And didn’t she play a doctor?”

  The embezzler shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

  See? Mystery.

  The story of my unusual birth and my odd name is simple enough, really.

  I was born Ada Sinmic Ghee in a squalid, semi-permanent refugee camp in Turkey, a place where people fleeing a variety of war-torn Mediterranean, Arabic, and African nations huddled together, occasionally intermarrying and producing exceptionally beautiful children. My mother had come from the east, seeking refuge from war and famine. My father had come from the southwest, up through Egypt, seeking refuge from famine and war. They had, you see, a lot in common. And to hear them tell it, it was love at first sight. Although they do not use the word love.

  “I could tell she was a good worker,” my father says. “In his eyes,” my mother explains, “I could see that he was not a drinker.”

  It was a match made in heaven, or at least Turkey.

  They quickly produced my brother and me, who were, as the children of a refugee camp, denied Turkish citizenship. So my birth records, such as they are, list me as a citizen of my father’s homeland, an arbitrary geographic region that is home to several warring and nomadic tribes. It is also, by law, home to me, though I have never even seen it. (It looks like that might change soon.)

  The Turkish camp was safe at first, but soon it became overrun and outgrown. It developed into a festering hotbed of disease, crime, and celebrity photo ops. The pope got involved. So did the “We Are the World” singers. The Bee Gees toured our camp and handed me a small doll—giving me, during one ten-minute visit, my first toy and my first glimpse at the world of celebrity. Robin sported splendid, sparkly platform boots, and Barry had a way of shooing off the photographers that seemed, to my untrained eye, the epitome of cool. (Cool was a concept I could not have articulated at the time. Still, I knew it when I saw it.)

  With that kind of pressure—the Bee Gees were still big in those days, at least relatively—Turkey eventually accepted the US offer to take us in. Jolly good of Turkey, wasn’t it? I still remember the soldier who circled my obviously mixed-race family as we stood with downcast eyes in the hot sun, waiting in a long, winding line to be processed for emigration. “Mutts,” said the soldier as he poked my brother with the point of his rifle. “Worse than mutts.”

  I thought for a moment he would kill us, or at the very least take our small jug of water. He thumped my father in the chest and tried to pull back my mother’s veil. He was loud, leering, and drunk—whether on
alcohol or power, I cannot say.

  I remembered that moment years later when cornered by Robert Downey Jr. at a surprise birthday banquet that Brad threw for Jennifer. They were so cute together back then. Brad introduced Bob and me, but then got called away to referee a dispute between the elephant trainers and fireworks handlers. Bob gave me a long, slow look. I thought I saw the same brazen intoxication of that soldier all those years ago. Bob took a sip of whatever he was drinking—not Diet Coke, I’m guessing—and said, “You’re, like, Asian, right?”

  I shrugged. Oh, why not?

  “And African, too?”

  I nodded, uncertainly. I wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “Co-ol,” he said and swayed toward me, though I could not tell if it was an advance or just, you know, a stagger. He casually put his hand on my shoulder and smiled wide enough to create furrows across his forehead. “Like, wa-ay co-ol.”

  That had not, obviously, been the opinion of the soldier, but when he reached for my mother’s veil, another soldier stopped him. “They’re not worth your time,” he said. “If America wants them, let it have them.”

  The intervening soldier is like an angel to my family. We often say a prayer for him, though to this day we do not know if he was motivated by kindness or if he truly thought we were beneath his contempt. Either way, his actions allowed us to continue in the emigration line. Eventually, one by one, we entered a tent where a federal bureaucrat processed our papers and, as it turned out, gave me a new identity.

  “Name?” the bureaucrat barked at me, his huge hammy hands shuffling through my family’s papers.

  “Ada Sinmac Ghee,” I whispered back, nervously.

  He divided the syllables wrong and used creative spelling to come up with Addison McGhee. And with the stroke of a pen, he took my most obvious tie to my family heritage. But then he stamped the appropriate boxes, initialed the appropriate pages, and sent me on my way. Quick as that, he gave me something as well—a ticket to America.

  Soon enough, I was sitting in a Nebraska elementary school, confounding classmates who tried to reconcile my sad ragtag dresses and my racially unclear features with my cheerful and chicly androgynous Irish name.

  More than one American has invited me to be outraged, offended, or at least a little disappointed by the involuntary name change. The eager-to-be-angry set always grilled me about the guy’s motivation—was he too small-minded to understand? Or too lazy to care?

  “Was it American ignorance?” asked Susan Sarandon, never one to back away from a national failing. (She had pulled me aside at a premiere for some awful David Schwimmer movie.) “Or was it American arrogance?”

  I wanted to ask the same question about her presence at a David Schwimmer premiere. But I said nothing. After all, I was at the party, too. One of the first rules of Hollywood: Never admit that you’re scraping bottom. Or partying with David Schwimmer. Lisa Kudrow told me that once, and I think she’s quite right. Dave is a dear soul, no doubt about it. But so is my great-aunt and I wouldn’t have much hope for a movie she made, either.

  “I don’t know, Sue,” I said, using my standard quip. “I always thought the guy was Irish.”

  What I really thought was that I had been extraordinarily lucky. In my family’s experience, if you escape an encounter with an authority figure having lost nothing but your name—you’ve done well. And if you gain, at the same time, a ride out of a refugee camp, you’ve done even better.

  My parents adjusted to life in Slater County with all the typical immigrant pluck. My mother took a job as a Wal-Mart greeter. My father mopped the bloody floor of a pig-slaughtering house, a job abhorrent to most Americans even without the added burden of a cultural and religious taboo about pork. But my father had what many Americans did not: a deeply held cultural belief that nothing was below him, a well-rooted sense of desperation, a long- and hard-learned lack of expectation. He was sort of like an aging Hollywood actress in that sense, only more so. I’m telling you, if my father and Sharon Stone ever got together, they could talk for hours.

  I appreciate my parents now. But in high school, they only embarrassed and mortified me. I was ashamed at what I considered their lack of ambition and their inability to fit in. By contrast, I studied American culture with an intensity that I, sadly, never devoted to my academic work. I read everything I could find that gave me a window into America—People magazine, miracle-diet-drug ads, and most importantly a slim volume on immigrant etiquette filed in our dated high school library between books by Emily Post and Miss Manners. I thought it was a delightful volume: Miss Liberty’s Guide to Impeccable Assimilation. It spelled out in careful and practical detail things that no one else bothered to explain. What is Thanksgiving? What is the difference between Flag Day and the Fourth of July? Why did Cassie’s mom give me two forks when I visited for dinner? And did it matter which one I used? (Yes, yes, very much so.)

  Miss Liberty told me not to wear white shoes before Easter, no matter what my religion, and never to serve “native” food in my home to American citizens.

  The book had been written in 1910, and I could tell that some of the information was out of date. Did I really need to call the landlord’s eight-year-old son “Master Scotty”? I sensed not. I observed that the chapter on “covered ankles” was no longer in effect. Still, I found the sections on such items fascinating. It helped me, in some way that is difficult to explain, make sense of the fashion rules that did prevail. Why could cheerleaders wear skimpy uniforms to school, in clear violation of the dress code? I didn’t know and I suppose I still don’t, but if reading Miss Liberty taught me anything, it taught me that sometimes the rules simply are the rules and as a little immigrant girl, it was not my place to change them.

  The glamorous PE teacher found the book in my locker during one of our regular drug searches. He picked it up, flipped through it, and whistled in disbelief. “Oh great,” he said. “How to throw off the shackles of your true heritage in eight easy chapters.” He pushed it back into my locker and slammed the door.

  I flinched. I didn’t remember Miss Liberty saying anything about “shackles.”

  As an adult, I can see where he was coming from. I can admit that it was not the most enlightened publication. But as a child that book helped me tremendously. And looking back, perhaps I would have been better off if I’d kept a copy handy.

  I tried to get my parents to read Miss Liberty, but they did not have the time, the inclination, or the vocabulary to do so. They did not like her insistence that I needed actual, engraved invitations to my high school graduation. And they did not understand why she thought we should drink hot liquids only out of real china, when church workers had given us a collection of perfectly serviceable and nicely sized mugs. So what if they advertised defunct tire shops, distant public radio stations, and more than one failed congressional candidate?

  My belief in Miss Liberty was just one of the differences between me and my parents. They arrived in this country with such modest ambitions for me. They wanted me to learn the language and to find a good man who would marry me. Perhaps I could find a job and make a living wage. When we first arrived in Slater County, my mother marveled as she watched a veiled woman drive a school bus.

  “Look,” she said to me. “Maybe you can do that.”

  By any American standard, I have exceeded those expectations. But they have not judged me by an American standard. They could not have imagined how quickly we would become foreign to each other. They had not allowed for television, had not anticipated its hypnotic hold on my brother and me. Television taught us English, which pleased my parents. It also taught us sarcasm and irony and teen fashion rules, which they were not so happy about. Television introduced us to jobs we could not have previously imagined—espionage, news producing, even ranching. Agent 99, Mary Richards, and Victoria Barkley were my role models! Bus driving? Please.

  With every passing commercial break, I was less the child of my parents and more a child of Ameri
ca.

  I watched everything, even the news. I especially liked Peter Jennings, who in those days was ABC’s foreign anchor and covered, among other things, the daily ins and outs of the Iranian hostage crisis. It was, in large part, those stories that ultimately convinced me I would never wear my mother’s veil. All those angry women, without makeup, shouting in the streets, burning effigies of Jimmy Carter. Are you kidding? I wanted to be one of Charlie’s Angels. Or at least, you know, the Bionic Woman.

  (As a footnote, I think it bears mentioning that I did, in fact, almost became one of Charlie’s Angels, being narrowly beat out for a part in the movie remake by Lucy Liu. My brother expected me to be terribly disappointed about losing the part, but it was a childhood dream I had outgrown. I was, really, rather relieved. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to stand all the blow-drying.)

  If there was one moment in my high school years that crystallizes the two cultures I was caught between, it was the summer when Cassie attempted to convince me to enter the Pork Queen competition, an annual event put on by the local hog farmers’ association. The winner received a month’s supply of pork and the opportunity to compete in the state competition for a modest scholarship.

  My family did not eat pork. And my parents could not imagine anything more vulgar and profane than competing for a generous allotment of unclean meat by parading around in a swimsuit on the back of a flatbed trailer, especially one festooned by bunting on the town square.

  But my own reluctance to compete in the Pork Queen competition had nothing to do with my family’s dietary practices or decency standards. My concern was more pragmatic. I suspected Cassie and I would both lose.

  I had a skin problem, which my mother blamed on American food. And unruly hair, which she blamed on her mother-in-law. And crooked teeth. (She didn’t blame this on anyone because she did not see it as a problem. Everyone in her home village had crooked teeth.)

  I’m not just engaging in false modesty the way many celebrities do, with their homey little stories about their difficult teen years. (I warn you: Don’t get Uma started.) I really did look, in those days, simply awful. Cassie was worse off still. If I had a skin problem and unruly hair, she had a hair problem and unruly skin. She also slouched.