“I enlisted to become an intelligence officer.”
“That’s crazy.” He laughed. “If I get called up when I’m eighteen I’m going to Canada.”
“Yeah, well, you always been a coward, Robbie.”
“I’m not no coward just ’cause I don’t want to go over and kill a bunch of people who never hurt me. What you want to do that for, Helene? What Vietcong ever called you nigger?”
“I told you. I don’t want to kill people. I’m going into the army so I can get into intelligence.”
“And what’s that going to get you?”
She sighed as if he was the stupidest man on Earth. “A job with the CIA.”
He laughed again. “The CIA. Out your damn mind.”
“Robbie…” I started, but Helene waved her hand, to signal that he wasn’t worth it. She’d become immune to hearing no from everyone—even people who were supposed to be allies—and was still confident that she would succeed. Defiant about it.
“Marie, she needs to hear this.” He looked to her. “You really think the CIA’s going to make a black girl from Queens one of their agents?”
“Officer,” she corrected. “They’re going to hire me as an officer. Agents are spies.”
“Yeah right. Good luck,” he said, and although he was being sarcastic and mean, he was also saying a lot of what I longed to. As the reality of her news settled over me I got angrier. She was putting her life on the line and for what? Some stupid, unrealistic dream she’d had as a kid?
“What do you know?” she said coolly. “And where do you get off acting so high and mighty? You never been about shit.”
“Hey,” he said, suddenly serious. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I’ll talk to you however I wanna talk to you.”
He looked to me. “Tell your sister to be cool.”
Helene and I exchanged a glance—he didn’t know me well if he believed I’d ever say something like that to her because he’d told me to. She said my name, but I was still too stunned to say anything coherent.
“I should go.” She turned in the direction she’d come from.
I told Robbie I’d be right back and followed my sister.
“When do you have to show up and…” I trailed off not knowing enough about the army to finish the sentence.
“When do I start basic training? Next week.”
“You kidding?” I said, shocked at the speed, then composed myself. “You’re not gonna walk at graduation?”
“No. I don’t care about school like that.”
“I’m walking. You’re not gonna be there to see it?”
She turned to me. “Can’t you be happy for me?”
“I am happy for you,” I assured her. “I’m just worried. And I’m disappointed you won’t be at graduation. Does Pop know? He’s gonna be pissed.”
“He already kicked me out. What else can he do?”
She said it casually, but the fight they’d had must’ve been intense. I’d never seen him as angry as he was after Helene enlisted—for months I couldn’t even mention her name. His reaction was as strong as it was because he was scared, and also because she’d blindsided him. He hated being sucker punched as much as I did, and had been unable to anticipate that one of his children, one of his girls, would choose military service over education.
“Where are you going?”
“Uptown. I’m going to stay by some friends of mine for a few days.”
“Will I see you before you leave?”
“Of course.” We’d exited the park. She stopped on the street corner and turned to me. Her eyes were glassy with tears.
“Helene…”
“I really need to go now. Okay?”
I nodded and hugged her. Watched as she jaywalked across the avenue then turned back toward the park. Robbie was still waiting where I’d left him.
“She’s going to basic training in a few days,” I told him.
“I don’t understand that girl sometimes,” he said, and when I didn’t respond he went on. “But don’t nobody really know Helene, do they?”
“Pop kicked her out.”
“Where she staying till she goes?”
“She didn’t say. Uptown.”
“Must be with some white friend of hers that goes to school up there. Who else would let her stay by them now?”
“Maybe she could crash with you for a few days so I can see her.”
“Roy’s not gonna want no sellout at our place.”
“That’s my sister,” I said.
“I know.”
“Anyway, Roy’s white.”
“Yeah, but Roy’s down. He’s a hippie.”
“Abbie Hoffman’s white.”
“You trying to misunderstand me on purpose?”
“I’m just saying you don’t even stick to your own rules about who’s down and who’s not. I admire Helene. She’s ambitious.”
“Yeah, you would. You and your cop daddy, all y’all are just alike.” He clipped a section of my hair between two of his fingers. “That why you still straighten this?”
I pushed his hand away. “I’m not down ’cause I press my hair?”
“Well, if I’m being real…it embarrasses me. You’re my woman. Reflect me, you know?”
“It’s my head, Robbie.” I screwed up my face as I stood. “Listen, you not better than nobody. And you not part of no revolution. You just a thief, and you been one since long before you ever heard of Abbie Hoffman.”
As I started toward the exit, he called after me but I ignored him. He said he was a radical, and counterculture, but so was everyone we knew. In that context, how was he any less conformist than the people he dismissed as mainstream? Helene was the only genuine nonconformist I knew, and through example she taught me to look for that in the people I chose to love and respect. Because I took the lesson seriously, after that argument, Robbie was permanently diminished in my eyes. It wasn’t until the day I met your father that I understood why I’d felt so disdainful: I loved Robbie and wanted him to be the revolutionary he thought he was. The fact that he wasn’t disappointed me.
* * *
—
I SAW HELENE ONLY once more before, as promised, she left for basic training at the Women’s Army Corps Center at Fort McClellan in Alabama. Meanwhile, I started at City College. My favorite course was a literature seminar that took place in a young professor’s apartment on the Upper West Side—I’d never really had any business visiting the neighborhood before then, and the first time I did was like an expedition into a new world. So this is how wealthy white people really live, I’d mused with an anthropologist’s zeal as I observed the scenes around me. I’d thought it was exotic stuff.
The class itself was pleasant and easy: We’d sit on pillows in a ragged circle on the floor and talk about how certain books made us feel. But I made a male acquaintance there that Robbie became unreasonably jealous of. That, combined with the frustrations that our fight in Tompkins Square had highlighted, precipitated the first off-again phase of our relationship.
After basic training, Helene was stationed at Fort Bragg. She came up to the city sometimes, when she could get space on a military hop, and would stay at a friend’s house where I’d go visit her. Things were still hostile between her and Pop. Thanks to my intervention, the tension had eased to the point where she came to the house once for dinner, but she still wouldn’t spend the night.
I went down to North Carolina as much as I could despite the unspoken friction between us. On my side, I was still resentful that she hadn’t been at my graduation and that she’d given me no indication she was planning to enlist before she did it. I don’t know why she was upset with me, and she wasn’t the kind of person to lay her grievances out on the line. While her gift for secrecy put distance between us, it also
taught me the value of intelligence: I learned that a secret is power, that power in application is force, that force is strength, and strength advantage.
Helene lived off base in one of the small aluminum-sided homes that featured so prominently in the anonymous suburban sprawl squeezed between Fort Bragg and downtown Fayetteville. We pretended things between us were as they’d always been by doing all sorts of things—had it really been as it always was we would have hung around and done nothing. She snuck me into a disco (I wasn’t yet eighteen) where we partied with her WAC friends. We raced in Chocolate Chip, the tiny used Honda Civic she’d bought, and I never let on about how much it scared me. She taught me to box; she’d joined a WAC team and said I might like the sport because—as she put it—I had some aggression I needed to work out. I’d laughed at the comment even though the assessment made me angry. We went to all sorts of parties—she knew a lot of people. It was all out of character for me; I’m not a traditionally fun person, but Helene was in her element.
One weekend she said she was taking me to a bar, so I put on flares and a striped shirt. She was more dressed up—wearing a white minidress with puff sleeves. She looked beautiful and I told her so.
When we arrived, she waved to a group of men sitting at a table along the wall; one of them saw and waved back.
“Who are those guys?”
“Eighty-second Airborne.”
“Oh yeah? Any of them radio operators like Pop?” I asked, teasing her.
“Shut up,” she said with a smile as we walked toward the group. One of them, the only white guy at the table, stood to shake my hand and insisted that I sit beside him. I looked at him. Pressed to guess, I would’ve said he was twenty-five or so. He had piercing dark blue eyes, a hawk nose, chestnut hair. I naturally had a good ear for accents, which I would later hone, and could tell he’d grown up in Texas.
After he’d been talking to me for a while, it occurred to me that Helene must’ve asked him to, presumably because before I’d come down for the visit, I’d mentioned wanting to get back together with Robbie. But I found her friend off-putting: His eye contact was too intense, he laughed too hard at his own jokes, and said my name an unnatural amount.
Toward the end of the evening, Helene pulled me toward a photo booth and we tumbled into it. Took a series of silly pictures.
“You still think you want to go to med school?” she asked, as we waited for our photos to develop.
“I don’t know.” I was already ambivalent about the plan even though it was a new one. I’d started telling people I wanted to be a doctor because it felt crude to say what I actually wanted, which was to be wealthy and respected.
“Have you ever thought about working for an intelligence agency?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to join the army.”
“You wouldn’t have to. You’re going to have a degree in a couple of years.” She sighed and tipsily let her head fall back against the booth. “Marie, I’m not stupid. I know the CIA’s a long shot for me. But if it doesn’t happen, I’ll find something else. The intelligence community is big. What Mr. Ali does, that’s intelligence. And if he can do it, I know I’ll be able to find my way in at some point.”
“I believe it.”
“Once I make officer, that’s when I’ll start pushing. If I learned anything from Pop, it’s that they may not want us, but we’re Mitchells. They’ll get us anyway.”
I made a quiet, dissenting noise.
“What?”
“If they don’t want you, then don’t fight their wars.”
“It’s that easy, huh?”
“It is,” I said.
“Not for me,” she said. “If no one will hire me, I’ll start my own firm.” I nodded. Spite was often a motivator for both me and Helene—it was never wise to tell either of us that we couldn’t do something.
“Is that something you’d want to do?” she asked.
“What?”
“Work in intelligence.”
“Me?”
“Promise me you’ll give it some thought. You’d be good at it. I know it.”
“If it was our firm, maybe. If I was working with you. I used to think about that sometimes when we were kids. Sister spies.”
“Yes!” she said, drunkenly excitable. “Promise you’ll look into it.”
“All right,” I said.
“Say you promise.”
“I promise.”
She smiled. “I love you, Marie.”
Before I could respond she added, “I bet the pictures are done.”
She woozily stepped out of the booth and took the strip from the dispenser. We looked them over together then she tucked them into her purse.
She woke me up punishingly early the next morning—I still had a hangover, but she seemed to be in high spirits. Over breakfast she said she wanted to box, so after we ate, we got into Chocolate Chip and started toward the base.
“Did you have a good time last night?” she asked in French as she drove
I nodded. “It was fun.”
“Those guys I introduced you to, my friends, you thought they were all nice. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s Robbie?” she said, her voice dripping with disdain.
“How come you don’t like him?”
“What’s to like?”
“I’m serious. Is it because you think he’s a bad influence on me?”
“Bad influence? No, I don’t respect Robbie because he keeps getting caught. He’s not good enough for you.”
“I like him more than that guy you tried to set me up with.”
“Which one?”
“The guy I was sitting next to. Wasn’t that a setup? Not my type at all. He’s kind of creepy.”
“I could tell he was really trying to be nice,” she said, sounding wounded.
“What’s his name again?”
“Daniel Slater. He’s a sweet guy.” She looked around and spoke with a lowered voice: “The CIA approached him. They want to recruit him once his contract with the army is up.”
“Did he tell you that? They made a bad choice if he goes around telling people that.”
She didn’t laugh. “I can hear it in the way he talks. I’ve met a few guys down here that I think are recruits. They all act like they’re tactical geniuses.”
“Does it bother you that they’re recruiting your friend?”
“Why would it?”
“Because of what you said last night.”
“What’d I say? I don’t remember. I was drinking shots.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve been seeing him for a few months,” she said.
“Really?” It should’ve occurred to me earlier that he’d been her boyfriend, but I hadn’t guessed that my sister would have picked him. It wasn’t that he was bad looking, and in fact I could see how Helene might have found his face charming, but he didn’t seem like her type. He was nothing like Freddy, her high school boyfriend.
“It’s not too serious. But, I like him.”
“Pop’s not gonna be happy about you dating a white guy.”
“That’s all you have to say?” She flashed me an angry look and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
On the base, she parked in a lot near the fitness center. It was large, brightly lit, and empty except for an older, muscular officer who was jumping rope. As I put on sparring gear, I asked her to go over some of the basics again.
“Let’s practice some footwork first,” she said, and I copied her reflection in the mirror. Maybe all sisters say this, but Helene was the prettier one. She had box braids then, high cheekbones, a full, pretty mouth. Her face was still changing—she was only twenty—and in the last few months her features had gotten sharper, giving her a regal look.
After she’d shown me the basic stance, then the four punches, we faced off and began to gently spar, my sister giving me advice about how to throw my punches with a bit more strength.
I sent her a shot to the chest that she wasn’t expecting, one that knocked her back against the mirror. I kept her pinned there, hitting her with shots that weren’t particularly hard but were brutal in their consistency. It felt like I was exorcising whatever anger I still had. She protected herself, and when she didn’t try to hit me, I thought it was because she couldn’t. Her watch beeped to signal the end of a round. We broke apart and sat with our backs against the mirror.
“You’re good,” she said.
“I feel good.”
She sipped from her bottle of water and gave me a smile that was hard to read.
“Ready?” she said as she got to her feet. “I’m gonna go a little harder on you now.”
I nodded as I put my gloves back on. We started to spar. Her glove immediately slammed into my temple, so hard that I saw a starburst. She hit me in the chest and ribs, absolutely clobbering me until, disoriented, I lost my balance and fell to my knees. The briny taste of blood jumped in my mouth.
“Come on!” she shouted. “Get up! Hit me!”
I looked up into her face, and for just an instant I saw that wild, girlhood fury of hers before she regained control of herself and backed away. She pulled off her gloves and her headgear.
“We’re done,” she said as she started toward the locker room.
8
NEW YORK, 1987
AS IT TURNED OUT, IT WASN’T only Gold who wanted to speak to me about the Patrice Lumumba Coalition. I was told an officer from the CIA would be coming to the field office to meet with me too—apparently he wanted to talk to me because one of their targets had a connection to the PLC.
I was nervous about the meeting because I’d forged Gold’s approval signature on Aisha’s termination paperwork and submitted it to bureau HQ. It would be especially embarrassing if that came up in front of an officer from another agency.
I was also excited about what the CIA might ask me to do. Through executive order, Ronald Reagan had changed the nature of our foreign surveillance operations. For the first time ever, the agency was allowed to investigate a foreign target anywhere in the world, including our own soil. Which meant that I could be working with them to spy on virtually anyone. I’d convinced myself the target was high profile.
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