You Got Anything Stronger?

by Gabrielle Union

  “Yo, did you see Danny DeVito on The View?” I asked everyone. DeVito had admitted on the air that he was still drunk from a night of limoncello with George Clooney. The dopey smile of Danny, with the class of Clooney—isn’t that what we all want in a buzz?

  Somebody offered: “Yeah, I heard that if you, like, freeze it, it’s like a lemonade slushy.”

  “Sold!” I yelled, grabbing bottles. Two Drinks Max sighed. I headed to the checkout, then circled back to grab two more. “Can’t afford not to,” I said. “Best to err on the side of caution.” The first and last time that caution meant getting more booze. “We’re having a party.”

  When we got to my dad’s house, we immediately put the limoncello in the large freezer to slush up, then set up two bar stations, one by the kitchen and one outside near the gazebo. This was Dwyane and my dad’s first holiday together, and things were still a little awkward from their last meeting. That one had ended with my father asking Dwyane out of nowhere if he was after my money. “Dad, save me from the millionaire who wants my thousands!” Meanwhile, the Lafayette crew took to my dad like white on rice and he treated them like long-lost nephews. Kyle and his crew worked their polite charms, and we were off to the races.

  “Where’s Chris?” I asked my sister Tracy, though I knew. At these events, my stepmother Chris would cook and cook for days, then become overwhelmed early and retreat to her room. Guests were then expected to make their way upstairs and stand in a receiving line. At the time, I didn’t understand that it probably was overwhelming to have that many people in her home.

  My dad constantly asked me, “Have you gone up to see her yet?”

  I played dumb. “No, I figured she’d be down. Since there’s a houseful of people? Is she sick?”

  With the hostess upstairs, Thanksgiving didn’t have much of a game plan. That was fine, though, as we just started playing spades and drinking the booze. It became a real party, and my dad and I caught each other looking around the room at the same time, pleased with ourselves for bringing so many people together. There was his own collection of stray foundlings, plus my stepmother’s family, all having a blast with the crews I brought: Dwyane’s Chicago faction, the Cajun guys from Lafayette, and the porn empire.

  The food was laid out on the table, and Dad had us put the extra leaf in just to hold it all. As usual, we gathered to say grace around the table, all these onetime strangers holding hands in a circle. We had two pastors present, Mama Wade and Chris’s brother, so there was an awkward moment where we had to figure out who should say grace. “Do rock paper scissors,” someone suggested, but Mama Wade immediately bowed out. In my stepmother’s absence from hosting, her brother would assume grace duties.

  He proceeded to launch into the Iliad of graces. This kindly man did a whole-ass performance, with twists and turns, shouts and singing. Those moments when you thought it was finally over? He was just taking a breath before continuing his audition for America’s Next Top Preacher. At that point, most of the guests were at least tipsy, and some were drunk. So, we were peeking at each other and starting to giggle as we squeezed each other’s hands. By the end someone let loose with a full-on snicker, which started a lot of us chuckling, and suppressing it left us shaking in a crying laughter. I caught Mama Wade opening her eyes to give a disapproving look. She did not know what to make of this laughing through grace. Dwyane, stone-cold sober, bit his lip.

  Finally, we all took plates to the tables set up around the house. There were so many people that new friends grabbed spots together on couches and the stairs. I noticed Tracy acting . . . well, anyone who has a younger sister will understand this: she was acting very “little sister.” She clearly wanted to peacock a little but wasn’t sure how exactly to get in there. She was still young for her age, even in her mid-twenties. That stage where you want to entertain and be entertained.

  So, she kept drinking.

  Almost as soon as the meal was over, people began wrapping the leftovers. My stepmother still had not come down, so people put the food away wherever they saw room. A thrilled “What’s this?!” rang out from the kitchen.

  This was the limoncello in the freezer, now slushy and ready to pour. We were already so drunk, we began pouring the bright yellow liqueur into tumblers and chanting, “Limoncell-ohhh.”

  Again, it’s a liqueur, meant to be sampled in dainty doses. And it was insta-crack. We were all on Ten immediately. Like the alcohol gods had snapped their fingers on Mount Olympus and said, “Let’s watch them get really fucked up.”

  Dwyane and I sat to play spades, teaming against my dad and my friend Ryan, one of the Lafayette boys. We were trash-talking cash shit. My dad and Dwyane were getting along, and I remember thinking, as the music blared and people danced behind me, This is the best Thanksgiving ever.

  Then I heard the opening call and response of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and smiled broader. As we kept playing spades, I saw my dad look up toward the kitchen behind me, where most of the people were dancing. He returned his gaze to his cards, which he held in an increasingly tight death grip, then back to whatever was happening behind me. He looked down, pursing his lips and doing a slow, exaggerated head shake.

  What is he . . . I thought, turning to look behind me. I gasped. Oh.

  My little sister Tracy was doing the “Single Ladies” dance, and she was nailing it. Beyoncé would have given her the floor. Tracy was twisting her hips, going forward low, then back. There was just one issue: Beyoncé did all that in a leotard, but Tracy was wearing a shirt with a plunging neckline. Actually, it wasn’t even so plunging, it’s just that Tracy has large breasts. The boobs were kind of everywhere.

  People gathered around to cheer her on, and I would say for sure that people were honestly just marveling that this little sister had the choreography down. But my dad just saw everyone watching his daughter dancing in a way that he felt was too suggestive. The Lafayette boys, the porn titan friends, his friends, and not one but two pastors.

  A chant began of “Go Tracy! Go Tracy!” Friends egging her on as she dipped lower, stuck her butt out more, flipped her hand back and forth looking for a ring. She was a spectacle. Her peacock moment had arrived. She loved it.

  After one last gyration, my dad threw his hand of cards down, pushed his chair back, and stomped over to her where she was bending low.

  “GET UP!” he yelled, grabbing her by the arm. Tracy was furious, her moment stolen. He took her outside to the front of the house to reprimand her, talking to her like she was eight years old. And you could hear her responding in kind. “Da-ad.”

  We couldn’t not watch, because now it was a movie on the big screen of the bay window. And everyone heard my little sister scream. “You don’t know me, Dad! You don’t fucking know me!”

  It was shocking to me, because we are not the type of family that cusses in front of our parents, and definitely not at our parents. That’s some white-folks stuff, and in that moment, Tracy was basically Jon Snow battling the White Walkers. Even the porn guys were like, Whoa.

  “What doesn’t he know?” someone from Lafayette said, drunk logic making him curious.

  “What don’t we know?” said one of the porn boys, as if it was a deep, existential question. Everyone looked at each other and nodded, stoned on limoncello. Tracy stormed off from our dad and half-heartedly headed to the cars, knowing we would stop her.

  We had a cab bring her home with a girlfriend and Thanksgiving was abruptly over. We had flown too close to the bright sun of limoncello. My dad came in to say “turn off that music” before going upstairs. I pictured him trying to piece together the afternoon for my stepmother, who now really had something to take to the fainting couch about. With the parents upstairs, there was a sense that we were all teenagers who’d been busted.

  Dwyane had to do his Thanksgiving night appearance, and we all felt so grounded by my dad that a bunch of us leaving for that felt like a prison break. At the club, Dwyane reverted to Two Drink Max, keepi
ng an eye on me. But I’d hit my limit anyway. Toward the end of the night, my sister Tracy appeared at the club like a ghost of Thanksgiving past. She’d gone home and went right to sleep. Had she puked and rallied?

  “Hi, Beyoncé,” I said.

  She looked at me, puzzled.

  I laughed. “You don’t remember, do you?” I said, launching into a quick recap of the dance-a-thon.

  “I did that?” she said. “Well, it’s not a big deal.”

  “It kind of was,” I said, putting an arm around her. “It ended Thanksgiving. But hey, you were great.”

  “I was?” Under the lights of the club, I looked at my little sister, the one who had tried so hard to find her place in a room full of big personalities. She is different than me and my dad. My father and I live in our heads so much that when we decide to go hard, we need to fill the space around us with people and drinks. We fill the room so we don’t feel like we stand out as different. But she wanted her moment.

  “Yes,” I said. “You were amazing.”

  I wanted to give my sister that gift of grace and admiration, the same way I offered my mother the unexpected opportunity to admire the blue in a painting of Mary, or my father a houseful of guests to host so he could feel that pride. Maybe part of adulthood is learning how to be as kind to family as we are to friends.

  Any bad feelings from my father about the day didn’t last. Even all these years later, my friends have a standing invite to Thanksgiving at my dad’s. Especially the Lafayette boys, who adopted my Omaha-born dad into their Louisiana family. Kyle is married and has his own family now, one to mesh with his chosen family of friends.

  In Union family lore, I have always described this as “the time limoncello ruined Thanksgiving.” And it’s true that it ended abruptly on a negative note. The upside is that it proved my family, as fractured as it had been, was just like anyone else’s: we have squabbles and misunderstandings at Thanksgiving and we get over it.

  I know Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” but to me, periods of unhappiness are something that all families have in common. There are unavoidable battles, with each other and within ourselves. We all fight our dragons, and if you are lucky—or simply intentional—your family is committed to slaying those dragons together. One limoncello at a time.

  Just not too many.

  14

  The Golden Lady of L.A.

  The essay you are reading now is a time capsule, one I’m starting near the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine in L.A. As the author, I know I’m supposed to be the one leading the conversation, but as I write this, I feel like you’re way ahead of me in time and I’m afraid to ask how we did.

  As I write this, we are a few weeks into lockdown, and I have found myself sleeping later and going to bed earlier. A thread of days fell away until they were in a pile. The other morning, I was awakened by the sound of Kaavia James laughing. She usually wakes up around seven or eight, and normally I get right in there. When she wakes up in her crib already laughing at something from a dream or some conversation in her head, it’s the best stand-up routine you can see. But I continued to lie in bed. I felt stuck, and yet adrift at the same time.

  “This,” I said to the ceiling in my isolation, “is probably not a good sign.”

  I am not alone feeling lonely. It’s come up in a group chat I am in with friends. The chain is big—full of single and partnered people, and sometimes each can covet another’s life even if they wouldn’t trade their own. I would say that in the past, the single friends have decidedly come out on top. COVID has shaken the board.

  One single friend mentioned she had been going to the drugstore just to be among people for a little while. That afternoon a cashier had made a point of mentioning how many times my friend had been in that week. She said she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to take it as judgment, but she was happy the lady recognized her.

  “Somebody out there can account for my whereabouts,” she joked. “I exist.”

  It was a line you serve to your friends as an invitation to be told you’re definitely not crazy to worry about your presence in the world, and it’s silly you worried you were. A lot of the partnered people, mostly with families, hit her back right away with messages along the lines of “That is deep, dude.” Some threw in a “Don’t know what I’d do without my husband” that made me gag.

  But I noticed her fellow single friends didn’t really chime in at all. I went into reporter mode, hitting some of them individually to ask what they thought and how they were doing.

  They immediately hit me back, with variations on the same theme of “too close to home.”

  I wanted to be a good friend and offer something back other than an empty “I hear you.” I had the impulse to hope that I would somehow see my friend Joyce. She would give me the context to help me get it right. But even as I thought, Joyce will know, another thought fell down right on top of that one: Joyce is gone.

  Joyce died in late January, in that pre-COVID time of 2020 that now seems like a naïve blur of ancient days. She died alone at home in bed in West Hollywood after an accidental mixing of substances. She was a nightlife publicist, and since we met in New York in our twenties, she was always at the best parties or throwing them, a gorgeous ball of energy and snark in a little black dress. She was famous here in L.A. as a publicist, and industry news outlets emphasized that she had been “found alone.”

  “Nobody knew for two days,” people repeated to each other. “She lived alone.”

  To hear a friend spoken of in the past tense so soon already feels like a betrayal of them, but there was a tone to how people spoke of her, tainted with a pity no one felt for Joyce in life. In real time, you could feel people twisting the facts of her vibrant life into a narrative that fit the company town that makes cautionary tales of such women. No man, no kids. Surely, she was hiding some “secret sadness.”

  The facts of her life were repackaged to craft a final act of comeuppance for the career girl. The Joyce we knew came to L.A. to reinvent her life after a messy divorce in her mid-thirties. She wrote her own story, one that didn’t involve a specific man, and didn’t involve kids, either. It was about chosen family and finding new members to bring into the tribe.

  But the media’s reinvention of Joyce was that she was heartbroken because she was never able to have a family. Like all good lies, there was a single thread of truth in there. Joyce, a single Filipino woman, was open with her crew that her family often felt that she was doing some sort of dangerous trek into uncharted territory. She told her friends that her parents had fears for her, and the greatest one was that she would die alone. Dying single, however, was never her fear.

  This hijacking of her narrative in death was so complete that it even began to color our memories of Joyce and what her passing meant to us. Our single friends told me that this tale was their nightmare: “To die alone in yoga clothes, and nobody noticing for days?” The mythmaking around her death also forced the married friends to confront our fears. If the idea of dying alone was, well, a fate worse than death, then we had to examine how a fear of that happening had influenced our choices. In our most honest moments, we might admit that in our thirties we looked around at this musical-chairs game of elimination and worried. We knew there were fewer seats than players, and went to each wedding to watch one more chair taken away. Did we settle, land in a safe, this-will-do spot and tether ourselves to someone for decades so we wouldn’t be standing alone at the hour of our death? And was it actually worth it?

  I found myself staring at Joyce’s @goldenladyla Instagram, trying to see if I really had missed some sadness. As I scrolled through the photos, I knew I was probably not alone in doing so. The news reports used her Instagram photos, and one idle click of a photo would bring strangers to her account, a timeline of her life. Maybe at that moment, some other lookie-loo was scrolling alongside me. Someone I’d never meet, who only knew Joyce as a story, mi
ght be judging and zeroing in on the same pictures to find fault. Like someone bringing a critical eye to the real estate photos of a house they can’t afford.

  They saw what I saw: Joyce, with a genuine smile and a pose she’d perfected. Her hand placed on her hip, a slight dip of her shoulder to showcase her long black hair, her angled chin raised to find her light. But what details did strangers fill in for her?

  I stopped on a photo of me that Joyce posted at my birthday party just a few months before her death. I am beaming in that picture because Joyce is taking the photo. If something had happened to me, I pictured the lookie-loo trying to decode my smile to find secret pain. You can tell whatever story you want about the dead. They are not here to argue. Just as a woman who dies alone in her apartment can’t put on the dress she loves, or stage herself to be found. She has to depend upon the kindness and grace of strangers. And count on her friends to seize back ownership of her story to keep it in the family.

  Her chosen family.

  I called Joyce’s best friend, who had been living in Denver. “I was just thinking of her,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I replied. Instead of feeding into the sadness, we reclaimed her pride and her power, sharing stories only sisters know. I asked if she thought Joyce feared dying alone. A long time ago, Joyce made her best friend promise that if anything ever happened to her, she would get to the house before her parents did. “Find anything that might lead my parents to think I was not a good Catholic who remained a virgin for life. Let them hold out hope for their forty-seven-year-old daughter.”

  “I booked a flight as soon as I found out,” her best friend told me. “A deal’s a deal.”

  “That’s real,” I said.

  “It is.”

  Not was, is. That kind of love is eternal. Joyce didn’t fear dying alone any more than she feared living alone. She was single by choice and she loved it, her life no less big and adventurous because she didn’t have kids. It served her memory nothing allowing strangers to apply a fear-based method of scoring to decide whether she had won or lost in life.