Daddy gestured wildly. “Have you ever heard of anything like that, Miss Sweet Thang? No meat ever? As bony as that boy is?”
Ma shrugged. “Peyton, he seems like a well-mannered young man.”
“Lord have mercy. And then he even turned down the fish I offered him. I thought Catholics ate fish. But maybe that’s only on Fridays.” Daddy got to the end of his sentence before he noticed us by the entrance of the room.
Raymond came forward to shake Daddy’s hand. “Thanks so much for your hospitality. Everything was wonderful.”
As I walked him to the front door, Raymond did more than his share of smiling, waving, and thanking as my family quickly assembled in the hallway. They swarmed like buzzards.
Before departing, Raymond took my hand, turned it palm side up, and gave it a wet, passionate kiss right there on the inside.
Then he let me go and reached for the doorknob, and he was gone.
Daddy, Ma, Leo, and Tracy John weren’t discreet about their gawking; their four pairs of eyes were just as wide.
Daddy let out a deep-throated chuckle and said, “Charmaine, looks like you have got yourself a real Romeo.”
two
“How does he do it?” Millicent, my best friend, asked the next day at lunch.
“Here, I’ll show you.” I took her hand in mine and closed my eyes like Raymond had done and nosed into her palm, leaving a kiss there.
“I don’t get it,” Cissy, my other best friend, said.
“He did that right in front of your parents?” Millicent asked.
“It’s just on the hand,” I said.
“I hope you’re not pregnant,” Millicent said.
“Very funny,” I said, and sipped on my carton of grape juice. I was the first from our trio to have a boyfriend, so I was used to this ribbing. It was a toss-up who would be next. Would it be Millicent, with her fuzzy French braids and talkative manner, or Cissy, with her full figure and cute laugh? Though Dardon Junior High wasn’t exactly overflowing with hot prospects, I didn’t think it would take much longer for either one of them. I suspected that very soon they would be walking in my moccasins, and I would have the pleasure of giving them the third degree.
Cissy took another bite of the square school pizza she’d been eating. She was more daring than I. That dried-out yellow-brown cheese frightened me.
Millicent resumed her questioning. “What did your parents think of him?”
“Well, Ma said Raymond is very well-mannered.”
“Like a dog?” Cissy asked.
“That’s well-behaved,” I said.
“How do you like him?” Millicent asked.
“Of course I like him. We’ve been going out since Kwanzaa.”
“No, Maine,” Cissy said, then added, with great inflection, “Do you really like him?”
“Yeah, do you think you have a future together?” Millicent asked.
So many questions … I mused over the idea of life with Raymond Newell and came up with “I don’t know; we’re both Virgos.”
“Uh-oh, you need a Sagittarius,” Millicent said.
“No, she needs a Gemini,” Cissy disagreed.
“I think that’s his rising sign,” I said.
“Well, then it will probably work out,” Millicent said with a bright smile.
_____
After school I went to Raymond’s house. He lived on Redwood Avenue. He took out the key and unlocked the door, and we crossed the threshold. His house wasn’t much bigger than mine, but it had more gadgets. Raymond’s house had a garbage disposal, a blender, and even a dishwasher. According to Ma, we had a dishwasher too. It was called Charmaine.
Raymond wasn’t the only only child I knew. Millicent was an only child also, but her grandmother lived with her and her parents, giving their home that full old-people smell. In Raymond’s house, there was a lot of space. Space that felt like emptiness, making me want to shout to hear my echo.
We went upstairs to his room, replete with his personal color TV and a private telephone, and I was back to thinking that he was living the life. He had normal albums like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, but he also had opera albums for his private edification.
I flipped through the covers to find Marian Anderson near the top.
Raymond stopped me, saying, “We don’t have to listen to that, Maine. You said your favorite was Al Green.”
He placed his record on the turntable and Green’s hit “Let’s Stay Together” started to play. As we listened, Raymond held my hands and told me how pretty they were. I brought up how he kissed me last night.
“You know where I got that from?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Rudolf Valentino. He starred in The Sheik.”
“Was he an Arab?” I asked.
“No, Italian.”
“Oh, right, Valentino.”
“He was known as the Latin Lover.”
I looked about the room. There were posters up and memorabilia of Hollywood’s bygone era. He pulled out an oversized book and turned to near the end. “It’s alphabetized,” he explained. “Here he is.”
I surveyed the pictures. This Valentino definitely had a dashing profile. He had a turban on his head in one photo. In another, he was kissing a woman’s palm.
“Where are my manners?” Raymond asked. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Sure,” I said. I was expecting more of the bubbly sparkling cider.
“I’ll make us some cocoa,” he promised.
Even better, I thought, and smiled as he left the room.
I moved to the middle of the book. The top of the page told me that this was the one and only Marilyn Monroe. It was a name I’d heard, but I never really took the time to look at her face. She had a real innocent, surprised expression, like a newborn fawn. The passage on her was full of tidbits, like that she came into this world wrapped in the hideously plain name of Norma Jean Mortenson.
Another fact I uncovered, and this one was startling: She was a trained actress. It said she studied at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, which sounded important and respectable.
As I read on, I was stunned to find that that pretty face with that pretty smile hadn’t led a very pretty life.
She had a father who didn’t recognize her as his daughter, and a mother who was placed in a mental institution. All throughout Marilyn’s childhood, she bounced around in foster care. In adulthood, though she found fame and fortune, she still wasn’t able to locate good luck. She had a number of divorces and miscarriages. To top it off, Marilyn Monroe was known to mix champagne with sleeping pills. I found it hard to believe that with all the people she had clamoring around her on a movie set, not a single soul had the sense to pull her aside and set her straight. If only I’d been there, she would have definitely heard my thoughts on the matter. If it’s one thing I’m not, it’s shy.
I continued to page through the text and found a piece about someone named Elizabeth Taylor (who, it said, had violet eyes, though I don’t think that’s humanly possible), and another one about someone named Marlene Dietrich (who had killer bone structure; it said she had her back teeth removed to create such hollows).
Within the five minutes I’d been left with the book, I began to tire of Hollywood. It was one white face after another, all variations on the same Eurocentric theme. Then I stumbled upon her, and I found myself thinking something I never thought I would: Thank God for Dorothy Dandridge. If it hadn’t been for her, we would have been shut out of this 500-plus-page monstrosity.
The passage stated that Dandridge was the first (and only) black actress ever to be nominated for Best Actress, and that doggone flaxen-haired Grace Kelly had to go and beat her out for the award. What did Kelly need with an Academy Award, anyway? She was already part of society. Her family was the very definition of Old Philadelphia wealth. In addition to that, Kelly retired from acting shortly after she received the Oscar and moved to Monaco and became a princess.
A
fter her loss, Dandridge took a nosedive, sinking into obscurity, bankruptcy, and an untimely death. I had never looked at things from this perspective, but next to Grace Kelly’s regal blond flawlessness, it dawned on me that raven-haired Dorothy Dandridge did look downright, dare I say, exotic.
Raymond came back with two steaming cups. He handed one to me. One sip told me: This wasn’t cocoa. This was that horrible Ovaltine. It didn’t taste like chocolate; it tasted like medication.
“I didn’t put too much in, did I?” he asked.
I suppressed my wince. “No, it’s just perfect.”
I studied his expression as he drank. Did he really like Ovaltine? Or was he like everyone else, pretending?
“So how do you like the book, Maine?”
I shrugged.
“Were you reading about Valentino?”
“I skipped around. I read a lot about Marilyn Monroe.”
“She had that real charisma, didn’t she? You can borrow it, if you’d like. You could read about the rest.”
“No thanks,” I said, putting the book down. “There’s not enough of us in here.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, people who look like you and me.”
“Well, as your dad was saying about baseball last night, we have had a hard time getting into motion pictures, too,” Raymond said.
“But there was never a ban on blacks being in movies.”
“No, there was nothing official. Unfortunately, even now, we just don’t seem to get a lot of glamorous parts,” Raymond said. “And that’s really unfortunate, because, Maine, you’re prettier than any girl in this book.”
I waved him away. “Oh, come on.”
“Maine.” His face broke into a free smile. “You should borrow the book. You are Marilyn Monroe with an Afro.”
When you wear glasses, there’s no such thing as spontaneity. I found that it helped greatly to take them off before I moved in too close.
I used to be turned off by Raymond because he was built like me, gangly. I always pictured myself with someone more substantial. And since most people thought of me as an egghead, I had visions of myself with someone who took the world less seriously.
But Raymond worked on me, especially during moments like this.
I’d gotten used to his somewhat protruding eyelids, which, before, I’d thought were toad-froggish. Now I liked his peepers. Even his wide smile reminded me of a friendly alligator.
With my glasses off, all his features collapsed into a haze anyway.
We touched lips, and it was magic.
three
I walked home with Raymond’s book, lifted by his compliment and the kiss, but my balloon of contentment was quickly punctured.
Ma met me at the entrance to the kitchen with this question: “Did you ask before you went over that boy’s house?”
“Last night, you said he had manners.”
“That was while he was here. Chaperoned. You told me both his parents work. Who was there to oversee you two?”
I looked beyond her to see what was for supper. Crawfish were laid out by the sink. Pleading the fifth, I walked past her and began to devein them. After I removed the heads from the shells, I stripped out the crap. I hoped that Ma would move on to other lines of questioning, but she was like a dog with a bone. She just wouldn’t let go.
“Was the light on?”
“It was daylight, Ma.”
“Did you turn out the lights?”
“I just looked at his Hollywood books,” I reassured her.
That seemed to agitate her more. “You looked at his what, now?”
“He has books on movie stars.”
“What’s that, some kind of code?” she asked.
Parents are such hypocrites. Ma never passed up an opportunity to counsel me on the value of chastity despite the fact that she was not much older than me when she took off with a sailor. Oh, yes she did. I guess it was a thunderbolt because Daddy, who was only about twenty, was on shore leave when they met. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t like Ma’s parents knew him all that well before Ma identified him as the one she was about to marry. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall during that unveiling!
Daddy, aka Petty Officer First Class Peyton Upshaw, got an honorable discharge after he completed his initial enlistment contract and said goodbye to a life on the sea. He moved his (very) young bride and child back to his hometown, West Philly. That was the first time they had actually lived together as a family. My older brother, Horace, was nearly three, and I guess things went well because I came along later that year and then Leo the following year.
I followed Ma into the living room and asked, “Who’s the extra place for?”
“Your uncle E.”
I thought for a minute, then shrugged. I had two uncles, and I was sure she had misspoken. “You mean Uncle O is coming over?”
“I mean what I said. Uncle E is coming over.”
Her delivery was so flat that the gravity of the situation took a while to really set in, and when it did, the words Uncle E cut through me like a straight razor. For, you see, the earth is curved, the sun is hot, and Uncle E is the family deadbeat. I hadn’t seen him since he skipped town, leaving us with a whopping one thousand in bail money forfeited to the court.
“He called early today,” Ma said.
“He called!” I said, suddenly frayed thin. “He called on the phone?”
“Yes, he called on the phone. He said he hopes he can be here by dinner, but he might have to work late.”
“He has a job?” I asked.
“Apparently so, Charmaine.”
“Maine, did you hear the news?” Tracy John asked, running up beside me.
I nodded. It was the equivalent of sticking a butter knife in a toaster—I was shocked. Uncle E was coming over. Low-down-rotten-good-for-nothing Uncle E. I looked for a place to sit down and collect myself. Wasn’t it supposed to be in the newspaper when big things happened, like hell freezing over?
So now he was back. This guy had a rap sheet that would fill up a blackboard. It dated clear back to 1957. Now he was in town. For what, I could only wonder.
It was five, then six, and Uncle E still hadn’t come. As dinner went from hot to room temperature to cool, I thought things had been going too well, what with finally having a boyfriend and all. I should have known something terrible was going to happen, like I’d be stricken with leprosy and lose a couple of fingers, or a plague of locusts would descend on eastern Pennsylvania.
Uncle E didn’t make it by dinner, and we held out till nearly eight. Everyone seemed disappointed, but with every ticktock of the clock I heard, I felt more relieved. Maybe he wouldn’t come over at all.
My luck ran out around nine. The doorbell rang and everyone (but me) rushed to the door. I took it slow. I observed him from afar and noted that he was pretty much as I remembered. He was Daddy’s height, just under six feet. Uncle E was slimmer, whereas Daddy was more muscular. But Uncle E’s eyes, which I recalled used to be so intense and jittery—an occupational hazard, I suppose—now seemed relieved, even calm.
He said to my cousin, “I know you, you’re Karyn.”
That wasn’t exactly an original thought. Nearly everyone said that about Tracy John.
“He sure looks like her, don’t he?” Ma said.
“Yeah, especially in the face,” Uncle E said.
I rolled my eyes. What a dumb thing to say. Where else would Tracy John resemble his mother at—his feet?
“Hey, Leo!” he called out.
“Uncle E!” Leo called back. “We thought we’d never see you again.”
“Well, he’s here now,” Ma said. “Welcome.”
“Thank you, Lela Mae,” Uncle E said to Ma. “Thank you deeply.”
He next got to me. “And this must be Maine, looking so tall and grown.”
Go away! I felt like saying but, of course, didn’t. “Nice to see you again,” I lied. Then I went back to sulking.
It was a funny thing: With all this emotion swirling around the atmosphere of our living room, no one seemed to notice my scowl. Then it dawned on me: Daddy hadn’t spoke up yet. Hope sprang anew. It might be worth it to see Daddy’s reaction to his long-lost brother, Escalus.
This was the man who was nowhere to be found for months.
This was the man who made Daddy lose one thousand dollars.
This was the man who left Daddy stranded in that courthouse, waiting.
Let him have it, Daddy.
Daddy opened his arms wide to Escalus and said, “Oh, brother!”
Oh, brother was right.
I leaned against the molding, my arms crossed in further study. This was straight-up sickening. I’ve heard of turning the other cheek, but this was insane.
Suddenly, tears of elation streamed from my father’s eyes.
Ma was well into her waterworks.
I took this opportunity to duck out. I couldn’t take this farce one more second.
Washing dishes made such an ugly sound: Slosh, slosh, slosh. But at least it took up time. Time I didn’t have to spend in the same room with Uncle E.
When Ma popped in I asked, “How long is he going to stay?”
“What a question! He is our guest. He can stay as long as he wants.”
“Did he come with a check to reimburse us?”
“That’s between your daddy and him.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I was a resident of 614 Dardon Avenue.”
“I know exactly of where you are a resident. I’m just telling you, Charmaine, this ain’t your show.”
She went back to the gathering. I peeked in and saw everyone carrying on a plain conversation as if Uncle E had never taken flight.
Daddy kept offering his brother food, a drink, and a seat.
Hollywood and Maine Page 2