Denise led them to the cosmetics department and promptly bought their mother La Perla face cream, Clinique cleanser, and Fashion Fair lipstick. “You need a little color in your cheeks too,” suggested Denise, eyeing her mother in a makeup counter mirror. Denise looked a lot like their mother—not the same natural beauty, but the same body type, the same complexion. Both were short, with wide hips and tiny waists. Their mother was plump, her stomach round and arms fleshy; Denise was a solid size 10, maybe a size 12 during that time of the month. She kept her weight down by eating Weight Watchers frozen meals for both lunch and dinner. She looked magnificent in knit dresses, and Angie envied her big ass and shapely legs, which Denise showed off with four-inch heels and a sexy sway.
Angie watched her mother trying on some blush, silently disapproving, convinced her simple beauty didn’t need makeup. She liked her mother best when she wore her long black hair in two braids parted down the middle. Nanette had a permanent poignancy about her since Ella’s death: wistfulness in her eyes, a half smile instead of the old laugh, faraway looks carrying her off. Angie found comfort in her mother’s sustained grief. It was how it had to be, she thought, and it enhanced her beauty.
Denise suggested they head to the fourth floor and look at the dresses, but Angie said, “I have a better idea.” She’d been saving this little surprise. “Mama can go to Lane Bryant and get a couple dresses, and I’ll use my employee discount. The store has some really nice ones on sale right now, so it’s like getting two for one.”
“Does Somerset have a Lane Bryant?” asked their mother.
“Well no,” said Angie. “I figured you could come back to Northland with me, and I can show you what I picked out.”
“Their clothes are a little low end, don’t you think?” said Denise. “We’re here, why don’t we just get her something nice right now?”
“No, they’re not low end,” said Angie. “She can get something fashionable that she knows will fit her right. What’s wrong with that?”
“Did I say something was wrong with it?” Denise snapped. “Don’t make such a big deal out of everything.”
“I’m not the one trying to show off, acting like Mama has never had anything until you bought it for her.”
“I’m just trying to be thoughtful,” said Denise.
“And I’m not?”
“Girls,” said their mother. “I don’t want to listen to you two snapping at each other!” She sighed. “I’m going to find a ladies room, and then we can just go home.”
She walked away.
“Great,” said Denise. “You upset her. Happy?”
Angie stared at her sister, trying for the umpteenth time to figure out why the sibling knot between them remained so undone. “That’s right, blame me,” she said. “Again.”
Denise sucked her teeth, impatient. “Well you are the one who keeps torturing her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The whole Lane Bryant thing? You know every time you bring it up, it reminds Mama of what happened.”
“I work there, OK? It makes perfect sense for her do some of her shopping there. But that would take the spotlight off of you and your wonderful generosity, wouldn’t it?”
“And why in the hell are you, a size 6, working in a store for fat women in the first place?” said Denise. “What woman would even trust you to wait on her?”
“I care about plus-size women looking good in their clothes. So slay me.”
Denise jabbed her finger into Angie’s arm. “You work there as some kind of homage, which I have to tell you, is weird. So is running to the cemetery all the time and wearing her caftan around and—”
“How do you know I had her caftan on?”
“Mama told me you wore it to some event a couple weeks ago.”
“So you two discuss me like I’m some mental case?”
“She just mentioned it. Will you listen? I want to say this before she gets back.” Denise took a deep breath. “Stop it. Stop reminding her. It’s been four years, and you’re not letting her get over it.”
“It’s only been three-and-a-half years, and how is any mother supposed to get over the death of her daughter?”
“You know what I mean! She needs to move on, Angie. She deserves to have a life.”
“She’s fine. We’re fine.”
“No you’re not. You’re in some perpetual mourning period, and I understand that. Really I do. But it’s got to stop.”
Angie stared at the escalators, at the shoppers with their bags, moving slowly upward as if to some retail heaven. “I get it,” she said. “Still jealous of her, aren’t you? She’s gone and you’re still jealous. Must you have all of Mama’s attention?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t even live here.”
“Exactly. But you’re trying to control what goes on here.”
Denise shook her head. “It’s not good for you either, you know. You should move on too. Like what’s your plan, now that you’ve graduated? Are you gonna move out, get your own place?”
“Why would I desert Mama? Leave her all alone like that?”
“You need a plan, OK? ‘Cause the way you’re living now, that’s not healthy.”
“Who are you to tell me how to live!” Angie shouted.
“Nobody can tell you anything. That’s your problem.”
“I can’t believe you. You waltz into town—”
Denise cut her off. “Look, Miss Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. Mama needs to get away from Dr. B. She can’t do that if she’s stuck in that house with you.”
“But she loves her job. Why would she—”
“She loves him, and that’s bad news because the man is never getting divorced.”
Angie gave her sister a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? Are you accusing Mama of—”
“This trip is just what she needs to get over him.”
Angie hated this feeling, that she’d missed something profound, something going on right in front of her.
Denise saw her confusion. “You didn’t know? Jesus, you do not pay attention.” Before Angie could react, Denise went on, “But get this: a high school boyfriend of Mama’s tracked her down and they’ve been talking over the phone.”
“Daddy was her high school boyfriend.”
“This was before him,” said Denise, exasperated. “Anyway, this guy lives in Atlanta, so she’ll get to see him while she’s there.”
Angie suddenly felt duped, like she was preparing for a party she hadn’t been invited to. “How long have you been planning this little scheme?” she asked.
“Shh, here she comes,” whispered Denise. “Don’t mention any of this to her!”
As their mother approached, Angie looked at her carefully. She was forty-nine. Angie couldn’t imagine her as some other woman. Nor could she imagine her as one of those aging women, chasing after an old flame. Angie needed air.
“Listen, I’m going to leave now,” she said. “So I won’t be late for work.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have to be at work today until three,” said Denise.
“Do you want me to ride with you, so I can look at your store’s dresses?” asked their mother, clearly trying to smooth things over.
“No, Mama, it’s OK,” Angie said over her shoulder. “Denise has that covered. See you back at home.”
She walked away, and then turned to watch as her sister and mother moved farther into Saks, suddenly wishing she had her own department store credit card, so she could charge a lot of fresh, new things she didn’t need.
Angie sped along Telegraph Road. She resented that Denise always had a way of revealing some shocking bit of family news that Angie never saw coming. Denise accused her little sister of trying to make people be the way she wanted them to be, rather than seeing them for who they are. Angie fel
t she could say the same for Denise.
When their sister Ella was fourteen, she lost thirty pounds, started getting catcalls from the neighborhood boys. Ooh girl, must be jelly ’cause jam don’t shake like that! Their father couldn’t compliment her enough, gave her money to buy an entire new wardrobe from The Limited and Casual Corner, places Ella used to walk past at the mall, on her way to the chubby teens department at Lane Bryant. Their mother insisted that was too much weight dropped too quickly, and she worried that Ella was taking diet pills. Ella denied it, although anyone who bothered to notice could see she was talking faster, jittery. Denise, ever the watchdog of their mother’s nerves, decided to catch Ella in a lie. She searched her elder sister’s room, found the pills hidden in a top drawer inside an envelope, under her new underwire bras. They later learned she’d gotten them from a friend, whose mother had gotten them from a doctor. Amphetamines. “They’re pep pills!” Ella’s friend had told her. “And they really work.”
Denise confronted her big sister, ceremoniously, in front of four-year-old Angie.
“These are drugs!” yelled Denise as the three of them stood in the kitchen. Ella had been making pancakes, and she held a spatula in her hand. She was wearing new eyeglasses. Denise thrust the envelope in her sister’s face. “You could get addicted!”
“Oh, shut up!” Ella snatched the pills from Denise. “And stay out of my damn room!”
“Mama is worried about you!” said Denise.
Ella pointed the spatula at Denise. “Mind your own fucking business!”
“Are you gonna stop taking those?”
“I don’t have to answer to you. You’re just a kid.”
“I’ll tell Daddy,” said Denise.
“You better not!” yelled Ella.
“Watch me.”
“Do. Not. Tell. Him.”
“I will.”
Ella breathed heavily, and her pupils behind the glasses looked dilated. “If you tell him, I swear . . .”
“What?” Denise goaded her. “What can you do? Nothing.” She was only ten, and yet she was a little woman, saddled with an adult’s power, and worries.
“Stop riding me like I’m one of Daddy’s horses!” screamed Ella.
“Stop doing bad things then!” yelled Denise. She lunged for the envelope, catching Ella off guard. Pastel-colored pills spilled out onto the checkered linoleum. Ella dropped to the floor and started grabbing the pills. Denise crushed one with her foot. Ella smacked her sister’s leg with the spatula. “Stop that!” she screamed.
Denise put her hands on her hips. “I’ll find them, wherever you put them. I know all your hiding places.”
“Oh yeah?” Ella took the handful of pills she’d gathered and shoved them into her mouth, moved to the sink, turned on the faucet, put her head underneath, and drank. She came up, thrust her throat to the ceiling, swallowing hard. Both sisters stared, shocked.
“There,” she said. “Now try to find them.”
They all stood still for a moment, the kitchen clock ticking loudly, marking the seconds as the drug made its way through Ella’s bloodstream. She ran upstairs to her attic room as Denise and Angie stayed frozen in place, listened as her bedroom door slammed. The stack of hot pancakes on the stove stood waiting.
Their mother wasn’t home. Their father was in Muskegon for the week, running horses. Denise followed Ella upstairs and banged on her door; Angie was right behind her. Despite the begging, Ella wouldn’t come out, so Denise called their mother at work. But Angie didn’t budge, rather she lay her small body down in front of Ella’s door, crying softly, fearful that her big sister was quietly dying on the other side.
Their mother rushed home and when she couldn’t get Ella to come out, called 911. Firemen hacked open her door, gashing it violently. Inside, Ella sat atop her bed, rocking herself back and forth, back and forth. They all went to the hospital, where doctors pumped her stomach. The girls told their mother it had been an accident, a silly truth-or-dare game gone wrong. For once, they were in solidarity. Later, their mother agreed not to tell the girls’ father anything.
As she thought about that day, Angie realized that was when their roles were set: Ella was the unpredictable wild child, Denise, the cautious protector, and Angie, the baby sister forced to pick sides. As Ella walked slowly out of the hospital that day, still weak, Angie saw in her face an earned knowledge, as though she’d discovered the secret to getting her way, to being left alone. It was 1970, years before Ella made her first trek to Africa, long before she started experimenting with drugs. When she downed those diet pills, she was still a high school freshman wearing knee-length dresses to class every day, still press-and-curling her hair. That day, she wore a polyester pantsuit, fashionable but modest, given her new figure.
After the pill episode, Denise kept her distance from Ella. She still told their mother things she believed her big sister was doing wrong, but stealthily, like a household spy. She swore her mother to secrecy: Don’t let her know I said anything! She was terrified of Ella. And Ella now seemed terrified of nothing, no one.
Angie didn’t have to be at work for two more hours. She turned left onto Grand River and drove to the cemetery. As she entered the wide gates of Grand Lawn, a welcome calm came over her. The grounds were lush and green, dotted with flowers lying on individual grave sites. Angie parked alongside the quaint cobblestone office building. She found it enchanting, like a house from a Grimm’s fairytale. She got out, and walked the few yards to the duck pond. It shimmered in the early afternoon sun, and she wished she’d brought Cheese Tid-Bits for the ducks. She liked the serenity and beauty of the cemetery, thought of it as the closest thing Detroit had to a botanic garden.
Her mother and Denise didn’t share her attraction to Grand Lawn. They never came. She knew they disapproved of her visits here. “The body is just a vessel; her soul left it right away,” her mother once said.
Angie agreed with her mother, believed Ella’s soul wasn’t at the cemetery, but her body was. That was certain, and she felt her sister’s vessel deserved attention. So she went to her gravesite on Christmas and Ella’s birthday and on the anniversary of her death. And on days she felt particularly lonely. She didn’t sit there and talk to the grave. She didn’t feel Ella’s presence per se. She tidied the plot, brushing off old leaves or snow. Sometimes she’d rub her hands across the marker, staring at Ella’s full name, the birth and death dates, and the sad words, “beloved sister and daughter,” because she died before becoming anyone’s mother or wife. But some days, like today, she felt satisfied to sit on a bench beside the pond and just be. She no longer told anyone that she came here; she could see in her mother’s eyes that the visits worried her. And now that Denise had confirmed that concern, Angie would be extra secretive.
If Ella’s bedroom still existed, things would have been different. Angie would have gone there to feel her sister’s presence, would have sat among Ella’s books and posters and clothes and been satiated. But when Ella moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan, Denise immediately moved out of the room she and Angie shared and took Ella’s attic bedroom. When Ella dropped out of the university, she stayed in the den, sleeping on the sofa bed. Eventually she and her boyfriend Nigel got an apartment together. The year Ella was in rehab, she lived at home again during the outpatient part; but even though Denise lived in Atlanta by then, Ella didn’t move back into her old room. Instead, she again stayed in the den, folding doors with accordion blinds her only privacy.
In her own room, Angie had gathered mementos from Ella’s life. On a little altar sat crystals and incense and candles that had all belonged to her big sister. Propped up beside those things was the “Free Angela” button Ella had worn throughout Angela Davis’s trial, and on her wall a “Remember Soweto!” poster of two crying boys rushing toward the camera. Clippings from Ella’s work as a journalist in Nigeria hung in the corners of
Angie’s dresser mirror, yellowing with age. If she were honest with herself, she’d admit these things conjured no strong memories of Ella. Yet they had outsize significance to Angie. They were physical proof of Ella’s existence, and she needed them to offset the slippage that came with each passing year.
Below them all, propped against the dresser, was the rectangular, weathered sign that had belonged to their father. The sign once hung from a chain just above the entryway to his horses’ stalls. “Samson Mackenzie Stables” it read. Ella was the one who took it down, brought it home. Funny, whenever Angie looked at that sign, she conjured her father’s presence immediately. Every time.
She looked out on the sloping lawn of the cemetery. Denise was wrong, she thought. Mama and I are fine. She got up from the park bench, walked across several plots to Ella’s grave. She moved her hand across the raised letters of Ella’s marker. She’d always felt a gnawing sense that something happened to her sister before getting hit by that car, that she was running from something. But what?
She’d hoped to find her answer by researching Nigeria. She spent hours and hours in Wayne State’s campus library, where she should have been working on her psychology papers; instead she dug up details about the country. She found very little beyond skeletal encyclopedic facts on population, independence, civil war, oil wealth. She found herself more drawn to accounts of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, or FESTAC, the festival Ella had attended the first time she’d gone to Nigeria in 1977. Angie lucked upon a Sepia magazine that gave a breathless account of the event, claiming that “a conspicuous ignoring of FESTAC by most of the American press could not stem the rising tide of history, could not stop the month-long homecoming for 17,000 blacks from fifty-five nations. ‘FESTAC IS HERE!’ trumpeted the Nigerian newspaper Punch in two-inch type.” Angie could picture Ella there, soaking in the sub-Saharan sun alongside throngs of gorgeous black people, free.
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