She didn’t lie to Sheila. No point in lying to each other. After all, the first time she slept with Rafe, Sheila was next to her. And they both slept with men regularly, for business and pleasure. A girl couldn’t get anywhere in town without it. Angela would sometimes fleetingly wonder how far she was getting with it, but it didn’t pay to think that way often. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other was the only way to keep going. Sometimes she thought of Rafe as she made love with Sheila, sometimes vice versa—a double exposure. She was aware of Sheila, of her affection for her, the life they’d built, with its rickety self, the pleasure they gave each other so easily and confidently. And she knew Sheila loved her too. Sometimes she saw her giving her a quick look in the mirror as they put on their lipstick in the morning, or the way she always seemed to want to be touching some part of Angela when they were sitting on the sofa. They didn’t own each other. But they kept finding ways to be together. They both wanted that. Angela found it easiest if she just moved through it and didn’t think too much. When she started thinking, she got scared.
They were both still Bunnies more than they were actresses. There were so many girls like them. The number of beautiful black people per square inch in Los Angeles in those years was staggering. Yeah, the real power was all white still, but the images on the screen were too black, too strong. Melvin Van Peebles beating down that white cop in Sweet Sweetback, Shaft ruling Manhattan, his leather coat flared out behind him, Ron O’Neal strutting so smooth in Super Fly.
Angela and Rafe loved to go to the movies together. (That was something she didn’t share with Sheila, who got very nervous watching herself on screen and got bored watching most other people.) They saw everything that came out, especially all the black pictures.
It was after the movies one night, walking back to the car from a double feature, that Rafe first asked her, “What’s up with you and Sheila, anyway?
“What do you mean, ‘What’s up?’ ”
“I mean ‘What’s up?’ I mean, you remember how we were all . . . together . . . that night at Wilt’s. I just wondered . . .”
Angela felt her face go still. “We’re friends. She helps me with stuff. We both want to be in pictures. That’s all. We ain’t dykes, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. I just . . .” He trailed off. They were sitting in the car now. “This is kind of special to me . . . you are.” He drew a deep breath and laughed. “I mean . . . no strings or nothin’. But still. I was just wondering where we stand.”
She took his hand, played quietly with the fingers. “I’m standing here right now. That’s all I can say. I got . . . I got stuff I have to do to get work and stuff I want to do because I feel like it. But you do too. And we’re together now, right? It is kind of special. I . . . well, that’s all. I don’t know what else to say about it. I’m with you now.”
He took his hand away, looked at her for a long moment. “Right,” he said. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. He just started the car, his hands easy on the wheel. He began kissing her roughly as soon as they got in the house. Like he was trying to make a point. But Angela wasn’t sure it was a point she wanted to see.
When Angela went up for her part in Coffy, she knew that something big was coming. Something really big. The audition was pretty much like any other. The look-over. The reading of a few lines of dialogue. The question: “Do you mind doing nudity?” By this point, Angela had had her clothes off in more movies than she cared to count. While she couldn’t really say it bothered her, she sometimes felt like there had to be more to an acting career than pretending to be dead and taking off her clothes.
Then the call came, “You have the part of Jackie,” the message on her service said. “Shooting begins Monday. You will be required on set for three to four days. Please come to the office to pick up your script.” When she got it, she found that she had a long scene with Pam Grier, the star of the movie. Pam was a big, tough, luscious girl. She looked ready to do whatever she needed to do. And she really knew how to fight and how to handle a gun. Angela was comfortable with a gun too. Her father had showed her how to shoot when she was a little girl. She still remembered his words: “Any of them crackers feel like they need to come back down ’round here, you’re going to show them what for.” But she hadn’t been asked to use those skills in a movie yet. The gunplay was all for the stars. Maybe if she did well enough in her scene here, Jack Hill, the director, would ask her if she knew how to handle a gun. “Yes, sir.” she imagined herself saying, standing her straightest. “I sure do. My daddy taught me.” No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get rid of her accent. Sheila told her to stop trying, that it gave her a trademark, something for casting directors to remember her by. So she learned to smile broadly when someone said in what they thought was an accent like hers, “Well, where you all from, honey chile?” Learned not to flinch when people said briskly, “Well, yeah, she’s got a great body, but what are we going to do with the voice?” Like it wasn’t even her voice. Like she was just some disembodied, honey-dipped thing. Well. Now she had a few lines. She’d show them.
She worked harder than she thought it was possible to work to get ready. When she walked on set that day, she knew it stone-cold solid. She had even worked out a little story for her character, how she came to be the hooker she was, a little bit of her relationship with Coffy. She’d read once in a profile of Dustin Hoffman that he always prepared an elaborate history for each of his characters. Sheila sent her to the set with a kiss and a whispered “Go get ’em, girl.” She felt like a million bucks as she started her car.
She murmured her lines to herself as she was made up, stuffed into a cheap, long, curly wig and poured into an ankle-length orange polyester number. The wardrobe woman yanked the front of it quickly, experimentally. Then satisfied, she blew a cloud of smoke into Angela’s face and walked away. Angela caught sight of herself in the mirror and almost laughed. She looked like a whore. Her mother would have died. But she felt kind of excited, to be so completely not herself. She ran her hands across her body, giggled again. “You think so, bitch? Well, I’ll show you,” she said. That was her line to Coffy, just before they started ripping each other’s clothes off. She wiggled in front of the mirror, then went down the hall to the hotel room that was the set for this scene.
Pam Grier sat a little behind the camera, smoking a cigarette and laughing at something one of the grips was saying. Stationed around the room, looking bored, were women all dressed like Angela. Beautiful, cheap polyester birds. Bright and inviting and not long for this world. They leaned against the wall, talked to each other in easy voices, until the director came on set. “All right, ladies, places, please,” he said crisply. “Quickly, quickly. We’ve got to get this shot in thirty.” Everyone hopped into place as though poked with a cattle prod.
“Hi, I’m Pam.” A briskly extended hand.
“I’m Angela.”
“You ready to do this?”
“You bet.”
“You look good in that dress, girl. Too bad I gotta tear it.” She smiled briefly. Angela smiled back. They took their places opposite each other. “Action,” called the director. “You want something, bitch?” snarled Pam.
“I want you to watch while I kick your ass,” Angela snarled back furiously. She felt herself ten feet tall, only rage.
“I think you’ll be the one doing the watching.”
“You think so, bitch? Well, I’ll show you!” Angela lunged for the front of Pam’s dress, suddenly feeling truly angry. Pam eluded her with one swift side step and just as quickly reached forward and ripped Angela’s dress wide open. Her breasts sprung forward, swinging a little as Angela lunged for Pam’s dress and tore it. Now all the girls were screaming and fighting, fabric tearing, shrieks. Angela felt her leg bump into the coffee table so hard that she knew instantly it was going to be bruised. Then she crashed to the floor. The cheap carpet felt scratchy underneath
her back. Pam was tussling with someone else now. Angela felt an odd mixture of embarrassment and intense excitement. Her eyes were brass, her breath was coming hard. She felt no impulse to cover herself where she lay. The scene went on until a leggy blonde reached into Pam’s wig and came away screaming with bloody hands. Coffy had hidden razors in her hair.
Finally, Mr. Hill called, “Cut. And print.”
The screaming and rolling around stopped as suddenly as though a plug had been pulled. “Thank you, ladies. Very nice. Very realistic,” he said. He shifted from foot to foot. “Next scene in fifteen.”
Someone brought Pam a robe, but no one brought anything for Angela. She stood, nearly naked and starting to be cold for a minute before Pam turned to her and said, “Nice work. Hope we work together again soon.” Then she went off, her robe drawn around her shoulders. She stopped to bum a cigarette from the cameraman. She suddenly looked a lot smaller. Angela shivered and drew her arms across her breasts. She went back to her holding area. Shimmied out of what was left of her dress and handed it to the wardrobe lady, who took it with a disdainful sigh. She skinned back into her street clothes without a word to her fellow actresses, took off the long, cascading, and now tangled wig. Unbraided her hair and picked it out. Used the communal jar of Pond’s to clean the heavy make-up from her face. Changed back into her regular self. But she felt a little thrill when she thought of what it felt like to scream that line and then rip Pam Grier’s dress off. Hot. That’s how she felt. She felt hot.
She was still feeling that way when she pulled up to the bar where she’d arranged to meet Sheila. They were going to have a drink to celebrate. Her legs were long and perfect. She was smiling a little bit. Everyone turned to look at her as she walked into the bar. It was like they could smell her high. She saw Sheila and took the stool next to her.
“Hey girl, how you doin’?”
“I’m good. You look happy. It went good?”
Angela ordered a gin and tonic and then said, “Sheil, it was unbelievable. We were all screaming and rolling around and tearing each other’s dresses.” She paused and laughed into her drink. “I loved it.”
Sheila grinned too. “What was your favorite part?”
“Tearing her dress off. Or maybe when she tore mine. I felt so crazy.” She paused, sipped her drink. “It kind of made me feel like making love to somebody. All naked like that.”
“Did it?” said Sheila, her eyes steady over the rim of the glass.
“Yeah. Maybe even two somebodies. I don’t know. I just feel like I could do anything tonight.”
“Well, let’s see,” said Sheila, grinning. She looked around the bar. “Have another drink first.” So they did. Then one more for courage and a little trip to the bathroom for just one little toot.
After that, Angela was racing. She could hardly keep her own hands off of her breasts or away from the damp, comfortable space between her legs. She threw one leg over Sheila’s—it was dark, no one would see, and leaned in, close. “I wish you could have been there to see it.”
Sheila leaned in so close that Angela could feel her breath on her ear. “I wish I could have too.” Angela stayed on the seat somehow, but Sheila’s voice went all through her, settling somewhere between her legs and her stomach. She turned, brushing her lips across her friend’s cheek and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
They drove home, kissing at every stoplight, too high to worry what people pulled up next to them might think. They fell on each other as soon as they were through the door, little agonized cries escaping them, not even taking the time to lock the door. Angela didn’t think about Rafe. She was utterly consumed by Sheila’s hands on her, Sheila’s tongue in her mouth, Sheila’s breath in her ear. When they were done, they lay on the carpet by the door, spent and laughing. They both jumped about a foot in the air when the doorbell rang.
“Who the hell is that?” said Sheila.
“How would I know? Let me go see.” She was feeling so loose and hot and cheerful that she barely buttoned up her dress and didn’t put on shoes or anything. She looked like a woman who’d just been fucking her brains out. Sheila rearranged her clothes and was on her way to the bathroom as Angela opened the door. It was Rafe, standing there with a bottle of wine and some flowers. She pulled her dress closed a little tighter, suddenly embarrassed. Nothing there he hadn’t seen before, but . . . he could see it on her, what she’d been doing. Everything. She could smell it on herself.
He stood, looking at her for a minute. Seemed uncertain what to say or if he could speak anymore. Were there words? “Thought you said you weren’t a dyke.”
“I’m not.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Don’t look that way to me.” More silence. “I don’t know about this, Angie. I don’t know about this.”
She didn’t say anything. A police car passed by outside, its siren blaring. They stood facing each other. Then he dropped the flowers on the floor, set the wine bottle down with an oddly delicate gesture, and turned and walked away. She watched him go, still holding the front of her dress. Sheila came out of the bathroom just as she closed the door. She came up behind Angela. “Who was that?”
“Rafe.” She was still staring at the door. “I told him we weren’t dykes.”
“Well, we aren’t.” Sheila slid her arms around Angela’s stomach.
“But what are we?”
Sheila turned Angela to face her. “We’re very good friends.” Then she laughed. “Damn good, if I do say so myself.” Angela didn’t laugh. She felt a headache beginning. She stood clutching her dress, suddenly unsure of herself. She’d been so sure just a little while ago, an hour ago, safe on the floor with Sheila. But now she didn’t know. She didn’t know what she was doing.
8
EVERYBODY KNEW EVERYBODY THEN AND EVERYONE was willing to do anything. Any drug you wanted, you could get. Any clothes you wanted to wear were fine. The longer your hair, the better. The fewer questions you asked, the better. And it didn’t really matter, did it? I mean, everything was cool really. It was kind of a turn-on if you thought about it, the two of them together, their brown girl legs intertwined, their brown girl mouths pressed together, their brown girl hands moving over each other’s beautiful brown girl breasts. Who wouldn’t find that sexy? Who wouldn’t find that a turn-on? Hell, he didn’t know why he hadn’t asked for it that first time. Well, yes he did. He wanted Angie for himself. It hurt to think of her with Sheila. He kept thinking of the light in Angie’s eyes that time she told him about church when she was a girl. He wanted that light for himself. And he could see, that time that he went to her and she had clearly just finished making love to Sheila, he could see that some essential part of her belonged to Sheila. He didn’t know if Angela was aware of it. But he could see it, and it made him want to cry.
He didn’t call her for a few days after he walked in on them. He knew he was hurting her. She called his service over and over. In the end, when he called his service, he could hear the reproach in the operator’s voice: “She’s called at least five times, Mr. Madigan, and she says it’s very important. Did you get our other messages?”
“Yes. I did.” His voice was level.
“Well, good,” said the voice emphatically. “We’d hate to see you miss out on an important message.”
Why the fuck do you care, lady, he thought. But he said, “Right,” and hung up. He dialed Angela’s number, not really thinking about why. She answered on the third ring. “It’s Rafe.”
He could hear her rapid inhalation of breath, almost a gasp, and then she spoke. “I been calling you and calling you. You ’bout to run me out my mind.”
He laughed in spite of himself. “I wasn’t the one who came to the door half-naked.” Getting right down to it. She went silent. For a long time. Finally, he spoke. “Look, it’s cool. I just had to . . . well, it’s a lot to take in . . . but you know, it ain’t no thing but a chicken wing. We both grown. And we both free to do what we like. Right?”
He stretched his legs out. “Well, why don’t you come on over here then, girl. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing you either.”
“See you in twenty, then.” She was there in fifteen. Standing on his doorstep grinning with her fine self. He buried his nose in her neck, inhaled her sweet musky scent whole. Who would have thought it was the beginning of the end?
In 1971, Melvin Van Peebles made Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song for $500,000. It earned $14 million. That’s how it started. Both major studios and small, scruffy independents like Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American International Pictures started turning out cheaply made, bodacious, and hyperreal action pictures, starring black people, if not made by them, as fast as they could buy film stock. The most compelling of them, like Sweetback, with its mix of black power and misogyny, the thrill of watching a black man beat a cop to death with his own handcuffs (even though it took place out of camera range because it was just too expensive to make it look convincing), offered an evening of the score to those for whom the score had been so uneven for so very long. It was 1971, 1972, 1973. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been dead for four years, five years, six years, and peace had been given more than a chance. So to rise up in the theater, to look up in the theater and see yourself, no matter how manipulated and filmed and badly lit, and speaking crappy, unconvincing dialogue, to see yourself, to see your rage there for a minute—that was enough for a lot of folks. But then of course it all started to fall apart, almost the second it began. The flesh turned on the flesh. The NAACP called it out. The white people made all the money. The black actors got only dope and coke and cold fried chicken and pay that was less, far less, than union scale. And whatever the point had been got lost in a sea of Afro’d gun-totin’ tough guys declaring war on the pushers and gettin’ all the honeys. The honeys, as usual, had little to say. They got raped, they stood by their men, sometimes they stood up for themselves, but not without making their way through at least two to three nude scenes. The good times couldn’t last forever. They never do. But Rafe and Angela didn’t know that then, lost in each other’s sweet embrace.
Third Girl from the Left Page 8