by Pearl Cleage
Pearl Cleage
•
For Bill Bagwell,
21st-century love warrior
Contents
HarperCollins e-book extra: A Reading Group Guide to What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day. . .
Acknowledgments
June i’m sitting at the bar. . .
July dear sister mitchell:
August now that her first meeting. . .
September i woke up this morning. . .
November we didn’t plan to have. . .
An Excerpt from I Wish I Had a Red Dress
About the Author
Books by Pearl Cleage
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Acknowlegdments
This book could not have been written without the love and support of my daughter, Deignan Cleage Lomax, and my husband, Zaron W. Burnett, Jr. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I also thank my family and friends, especially my sister, Kristen Cleage Williams, and my father, Jaramogi Abebe Agyman, Debbie Thomas-Bryan and Don Bryan, Jimmie Lee Tarver, Walter R. Huntley, Jr., Melanie Lomax, Woodie King, Jr., Andrea Hairston, Kenny Leon and Carol Mitchell Leon, Cecilia Corbin Hunter, Carolyn Monteilh, Valerie Boyd, A.B. and Karen Spellman, Brother Kefing, The Mongo, Ingrid Saunders Jones, and last but never least, Jondrè Pryor, who brought the good news.
Thanks also to Pat Lottier and the Atlanta Tribune, Susan Taylor and Essence magazine, Denise Stinson, Howard Rosenstone, Johnnetta Cole and Spelman College, and Carrie Feron, for their support and assistance.
I will bring you a whole person
and you will bring me a whole person
and we will have us twice as much
of love and everything . . .
“Celebration,” Mari Evans
june
• 1
i’m sitting at the bar in the airport, minding my own business, trying to get psyched up for my flight, and I made the mistake of listening to one of those TV talk shows. They were interviewing some women with what the host kept calling full-blown AIDS. As opposed to half-blown AIDS, I guess. There they were, weeping and wailing and wringing their hands, wearing their prissy little Laura Ashley dresses and telling their edited-for-TV life stories.
The audience was eating it up, but it got on my last nerve. The thing is, half these bitches are lying. More than half. They get diagnosed and all of a sudden they’re Mother Teresa. I can’t be positive! It’s impossible! I’m practically a virgin! Bullshit. They got it just like I got it: fucking men.
That’s not male bashing either. That’s the truth. Most of us got it from the boys. Which is, when you think about it, a pretty good argument for cutting men loose, but if I could work up a strong physical reaction to women, I would already be having sex with them. I’m not knocking it. I’m just saying I can’t be a witness. Too many titties in one place to suit me.
I try to tune out the almost-a-virgins, but they’re going on and on and now one is really sobbing and all of a sudden I get it. They’re just going through the purification ritual. This is how it goes: First, you have to confess that you did nasty, disgusting sex stuff with multiple partners who may even have been of your same gender. Or you have to confess that you like to shoot illegal drugs into your veins and sometimes you use other people’s works when you want to get high and you came unprepared. Then you have to describe the sin you have confessed in as much detail as you can remember. Names, dates, places, faces. Specific sexual acts. Quantity and quality of orgasms. What kind of dope you shot. What park you bought it in. All the down and dirty. Then, once your listeners have been totally freaked out by what you’ve told them, they get to decide how much sympathy, attention, help, money, and understanding you’re entitled to based on how disgusted they are.
I’m not buying into that shit. I don’t think anything I did was bad enough for me to earn this as the payback, but it gets rough out here sometimes. If you’re not a little kid, or a heterosexual movie star’s doomed but devoted wife, or a hemophiliac who got it from a tainted transfusion, or a straight white woman who can prove she’s a virgin with a dirty dentist, you’re not eligible for any no-strings sympathy.
The truth is, people are usually relieved. It always makes them feel better when they know the specifics of your story. You can see their faces brighten up when your path is one they haven’t traveled. That’s why people keep asking me if I know who I got it from. Like all they’d have to do to ensure their safety is cross this specific guy’s name off their list of acceptable sexual partners the same way you do when somebody starts smoking crack: no future here. But I always tell them the truth: I have no idea. That’s when they frown and give me one last chance to redeem myself. If I don’t know who, do I at least know how many?
By that time I can’t decide if I’m supposed to be sorry about having had a lot of sex or sorry I got sick from it. And what difference does it make at this point anyway? It’s like lying about how much you loved the rush of the nicotine just because now you have lung cancer.
I’m babbling. I must be higher than I thought. Good. I hate to fly. I used to dread it so much I’d have to be falling-down drunk to get on a plane. For years I started every vacation with a hangover. That’s actually how I started drinking vodka, trying to get up the nerve to go to Jamaica for a reggae festival. Worked like a charm, too, and worth a little headache the first day out and the first day back.
I know I drink too much, but I’m trying to cut back. When I first got diagnosed, I stayed drunk for about three months until I realized it was going to be a lot harder to drink myself to death then it might be to wait it out and see what happens. Some people live a long time with HIV. Maybe I’ll be one of those, grinning like a maniac on the front of Parade magazine, talking about how I did it.
I never used to read those survivor testimonials, but now I do, for obvious reasons. The first thing they all say they had to do was learn how to calm the fuck down, which is exactly why I was drinking so much, trying to cool out. The problem was, after a while I couldn’t tell if it was the vodka or the HIV making me sick, and I wanted to know the difference.
But I figure a little lightweight backsliding at thirty thousand feet doesn’t really count, so by the time we boarded, I had polished off two doubles and was waiting for the flight attendant to smile that first-class-only smile and bring me two more. That’s why I pay all that extra money to sit up here, so they’ll bring me what I want before I have to ring the bell and ask for it.
The man sitting next to me is wearing a beautiful suit that cost him a couple of grand easy and he’s spread out calculators, calendars, and legal pads across his tray table like the plane is now his personal office in the air. I think all that shit is for show. I don’t believe anybody can really concentrate on business when they’re hurtling through the air at six hundred miles an hour. Besides, ain’t nobody that damn busy.
He was surprised as hell when I sat down next to him. White men in expensive suits are always a little pissed to find themselves seated next to me in first class, especially since I started wearing my hair so short. They seem to take it as some kind of personal affront that of all the seats on the airplane, the baldheaded black woman showed up next to them. It used to make me uncomfortable. Now I think of it as helping them take a small step toward higher consciousness. Discomfort is always a necessary part of the process of enlightenment.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t grip and pray during takeoff. It wasn’t that I was drunk. I’ve been a lot drunker on a lot of other airplanes. It’s just that at this point, a plane crash might be just what the doctor ordere
d.
• 2
i always forget how small the terminal is in Grand Rapids. Two or three shops, a newsstand, and a lounge with a big-screen TV, but barely enough vodka to make me another double while I wait for Joyce, who is, of course, a little late. I truly love my big sister, but I swear if she was ever on time for anything, I’d probably have a heart attack at the shock of it.
The bartender seemed surprised when the drink he poured for me emptied his only bottle of Absolut. He set the glass down in front of me on a cocktail napkin printed with a full-color map of Michigan.
“Sorry I don’t have lime,” he said. “Most people come through here just drink a beer or something.”
“It’s fine,” I said, taking a long swallow to prove it. I knew that if he could think of something else to say, he would, but our brief exchange seemed to have exhausted his conversational skills. He headed back to the TV.
It feels strange to be sitting here writing all this down. The last time I kept a diary was when I first got to Atlanta in 1984. Things were happening so fast I started writing it all down to try and keep up. Just like now. I was nineteen. I had a brand-new cosmetology license, two years salon experience, and an absolute understanding of the fact that it was time for me to get the hell out of Detroit.
When I was growing up in Idlewild, my tiny hometown four hours north of the big city, the motor city had always seemed as close to paradise as I could probably stand. Two years of really being there showed me how truly wrong I could be.
I had heard that if you were young and black and had any sense, Atlanta was the place to be, and that was the damn truth. Those Negroes were living so good, they could hardly stand themselves. They had big dreams and big cars and good jobs and money in the bank. They had just elected another one of their own to the mayor’s office, they were selling plenty of wolf tickets downtown, and they partied hard and continuously.
My first week in town, I hooked up with a sister who was going to work for the new mayor, and she invited me to a cocktail reception at one of the big downtown hotels. When we got there, I felt like I had walked into one of those ads in Ebony where the fine brother in the designer tux says to the beautiful sister in the gorgeous gown: I assume you drink Martel? Folks were standing around laughing and talking and pretending they had been doing this shit for years.
My friend was steadily working the crowd, and by the end of the evening, I had been introduced to everybody who was anybody among the new power people. My first impression was that they were the best-dressed, best-coifed, horniest crowd I had ever seen. I knew my salon was going to make a fortune, and it did. I’d still be making good money if I hadn’t tried to do the right thing.
When I got the bad news, I sat down and wrote to all the men I’d had sex with in the last ten years. It’s kind of depressing to make a list like that. Makes you remember how many times you had sex when you should have just said good night and gone home. Sometimes, at first, when I was really pissed off at the injustice of it all and some self-righteous anger seemed more appealing than another round of whining, I used to try and figure out who gave it to me in the first place, but I knew that line of thinking was bullshit. The question wasn’t who gave it to me. The question was what was I going to do about it. Still, when I think about all the men I slept with that I didn’t even really care about, it drives me crazy to think I could be paying with my life for some damn sex that didn’t even make the earth move.
When I called Joyce and told her what I was going to do, she told me I was crazy and to let sleeping dogs lie, but I felt like it was only fair. I didn’t even know how long I had been carrying it and I sure didn’t know who I got it from. Atlanta is always full of men with money to spend on you if you know how to have a good time, and I used to be a good-time somebody when I put my mind to it.
So I sat down and tried to figure out how to tell these guys what was up without freaking them out. Hey, Bobby, long time no see! Have you been tested for HIV yet? Hey, Jerome, what’s up, baby? Listen, it might be a good time for you to get tested for HIV. I don’t remember what all I finally said, except to tell them I was really sorry and that if they wanted to talk, to call me anytime.
To tell the truth, I was a little nervous. I’d heard a few stories about people going off on their ex-lovers when they found out, but nobody contacted me for a couple of weeks, so I figured they were all going to deal with it in their own way. Then one Saturday, the salon was full of people, and in walks this woman I’ve never seen before. She walked right past the receptionist and up to me like we were old friends, except her face didn’t look too friendly.
“Are you Ava Johnson?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me what you think you’re doing sending my husband some shit like this through the mail.” She reached into her purse, took out one of my letters, and waved it in my face, her voice suddenly rising to just short of a shriek.
As noisy as the salon always was on Saturday afternoon, it got so quiet so fast, all I could hear was the Anita Baker CD we’d been playing all morning. I tried to stay calm and ask her if she wanted to go into my office so we could talk. She didn’t even let me finish.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you, you nasty heifer!”
I knew she was upset, but she was pushing it. I wondered if he’d given her the letter to read or if she’d discovered it on what was probably a routine wifely search through his pockets.
“All right then,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I want you to take it back,” she said.
“Take it back?” I was really confused now. What good was that going to do?
“You heard me, bitch!” She shouted over Anita’s soothing admonitions about the importance of finding your own rhythms. “Take it back!”
I held up my hand to let her know she had gone too far, and she drew back and slapped me across the mouth. Two of my operators grabbed her and pushed her out the door, but all the time she’s hollering at the top of her lungs, “This bitch got AIDS! This bitch got AIDS!”
I tried to play if off, but it really shook me up. I finally had to cancel the rest of my appointments and go home for the day. I was distracted, and that’s when you run the risk of leaving the perm on too long, or cutting the bangs too short, or putting the crimp in sideways and your life isn’t worth two cents. Sisters will forgive you a lot, but do not fuck up their hair.
The slap didn’t do me any serious damage, but the rumors that scene started didn’t help business any. I sent out a letter to our clients explaining the difference between HIV and AIDS, but they were scared. They started calling to cancel appointments or just not showing up at all. That’s when I really started to understand how afraid people can be when they don’t have any information.
All those folks who had been giving me those African-American Businesswoman of the Year awards and Mentor of the Month citations and invitations to speak from the pulpit on Women’s Day stopped calling me. When people I’d known for ten years saw me out, they’d wave and smile and head off in the other direction. Everybody knew, but nobody mentioned it. They acted like it was too embarrassing to bring it up in polite company. I guess we were all still supposed to be virgins instead of just stupid.
When I got a good offer from a hotshot young developer for the downtown land the salon building was sitting on, I figured this was a good time to take the money and run. It was time for a change. I wanted to open another business that didn’t require doing heads or frying chicken, and I was truly tired of living in a place where so many people still thought getting AIDS was proof that you were a child of Satan.
I know as well as anybody that being diagnosed HIV-positive changes everything about your life, but it’s still your life, the only one you know for sure you got, so you better figure out how to live it as best you can, which is exactly what I intended to do. I wanted to move someplace where I didn’t have to apologize for not disappearing be
cause my presence made people nervous. I wanted a more enlightened pool of folks from which to draw potential lovers. I wanted to be someplace where I could be my black, female, sexual, HIV-positive self.
The salon sale gave me enough money to finance a big move without stress. Add to that the money I made when my house sold immediately and I was set for a couple of years without working at anything but living right. From where I was sitting, San Francisco looked like heaven, earthquakes notwithstanding. Natural disasters were no longer my main concern. That’s one of the things about being positive. It focuses your fear. You don’t have to worry about auto accidents, breast cancer, nerve gas on the subway. None of that shit. You already know your death by name.
When I called Joyce to tell her I had decided to move to the West Coast in the fall and ask her if she wanted some company for the summer, she did the big-sister thing, got all excited and started talking a mile a minute. She started some kind of youth group at her church, and now that Mitch’s insurance settled out, she’s quit her job as a caseworker with the Department of Family and Children’s Services so she can work this thing full-time. She said all the young people in Idlewild are going to hell in a handbasket and if we don’t do something pretty quick, the town is going to be just as violent and crazy as the cities are.
I tried to say, What you mean we, like that old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, but she sounded so much like her old self again, all happy and optimistic, I didn’t want to discourage her. After Mitch, her husband, died, I never thought I’d hear her sound like that again. She hardly talked at all for months after, but I should have known that was only temporary. Joyce always finds a way to make it better.
She’s had some bad luck, too. In fact, until recently, I thought Joyce had been given our family’s entire allotment. Two kids and a husband, all dead before she hit forty. One baby died in her sleep two weeks after they brought her home from the hospital. The other kid was walking home from the school bus and got hit by a drunk twelve-year-old who stole his mother’s keys and then passed out behind the wheel of the family station wagon.
