Babylon Sisters

by Pearl Cleage

  “Miriam,” I said. “I need your help.”

  “What can I do?” she said quickly. “I will do anything to find my sister.”

  “Will you come and work for me?”

  She was surprised, and her eyes opened wide under that ridiculous wig. “Work for you?”

  I nodded. “If I’m going to be out and about, I need someone to answer the phones, respond to e-mail. The same kinds of things you’ve been doing for Amelia.”

  I knew her internship would be over soon and that Amelia wasn’t going to be able to keep her. This might work out perfectly. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

  “You could start as soon as you’re finished at Amelia’s.”

  Her expression told me everything I needed to know, but if it hadn’t, she threw her arms around my neck and hugged me so hard, the wig slid over one eye so she looked like a drunken pirate.

  “Yes! I would love to work for you!” she said, grabbing the wig and tugging it down to secure it. “Yes!”

  “Good,” I said, “but there’s one thing you have to do for me.”

  She was suddenly serious. “Yes?”

  “Don’t wear the wig at work.” She looked embarrassed, but I smiled reassuringly. “Amelia told me why you wear it, but most of the time it’ll just be me and you, so you can be yourself.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a smile of pure gratitude. “I will.”

  29

  How did I let Amelia convince me that I could manipulate this ridiculous jumble of fabric without her assistance? She was in a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce with Mr. Tanaka, followed by dinner, and wouldn’t be back for another couple of hours. I was finally forced to admit that without her, this was worse than a losing proposition. It was also a giant stress inducer, confidence buster, and all around reminder that whatever I might have grown up to be, a fashion plate was not among the possibilities. After draping and redraping for the better part of forty-five minutes, I gave up and retreated to the safety of my own clothes. A pair of easy-cut black pants from Chico’s, the busy woman’s boutique of choice, and a brightly embroidered blouse from Guatamala I had found at a tiny shop in Northampton when Phoebe and I first went to look at Smith made me feel better immediately. I added a pair of big silver hoops and five or six bangles, and even broke down and brushed on a tiny bit of blush. Eighteen years is a long time. No harm in putting my best face forward.

  The stress had rolled off me in a wave as soon as I stepped out of Amelia’s dress, so I sat down on the side of the bed to buckle on my favorite little Chinese shoes with the red silk dragon on each toe and tried to conjure up an image of B.J.’s face, eighteen years later, but I couldn’t. What changes a face from one thing to another is not just the passage of time, but what’s going on as you’re moving through it. The lines around your mouth are affected by how often you smile, just like your eyes are affected by how often you cry. The face I remembered when I thought about B.J. was lean and brown and young. I wondered what face B.J. remembered when he thought about me.

  I took my shawl from the closet, threw it over my shoulder with no need to drape a damn thing, and looked at myself in the mirror. There I was: healthy, happy, a little nervous about the next couple of hours, but relieved of the need to worry about my dress disintegrating during dessert, nothing I couldn’t handle. I had tied my hair up and off my face so there was nothing to hide behind, and that was fine with me. I didn’t want him to respond to me for looking like somebody else. I was prepared to stand or fall in this moment based on who I really be, as the jazz guys say. And truth be told? I be just fine, thanks. I think I be just fine.

  30

  I saw him before he saw me. That was no accident. I arrived fifteen minutes early to secure a spot in the window so I could do just that. I ordered a glass of wine and tried to relax. At least I was in familiar surroundings. The Pleasant Peasant is my favorite downtown restaurant, and it has occupied the same location for thirty years. Like many downtown diehards, their current challenge is negotiating safe passage for their customers through the constant flow of homeless men from a nearby shelter. Although they weren’t usually aggressive, panhandlers make people nervous, and that’s never good for business.

  I’ve made peace with panhandlers by being sure I carry a couple of dollar bills in an easily accessible pocket when I walk around downtown. When I’m approached, I offer a dollar immediately. Nobody’s mad at getting any denomination of folding money, so the exchange ends on a pleasant note of common humanity instead of guilt and recrimination. I chalk it up to urban living, and keep on steppin’. I had given a dollar to a guy pushing an overstuffed trash bag in a battered grocery cart on my way into the Peasant tonight. He thanked me profusely, and I told him to take care of himself, and that was the end of it.

  But as I looked out the window, waiting for B.J. to alight from a cab out front, I saw the guy again, walking down Peachtree Street with the early-evening traffic whizzing by, engaged in an earnest conversation with a tall, thin man in a black turtleneck and an open trench coat with the collar turned up. Before they parted company, the tall man handed the man with the cart his second piece of folding money in less than an hour. Of course, it was B.J.

  I looked at him through that window, and damn if it didn’t all come back in a great big rush. All the good stuff and all those last terrible, confusing moments, until I didn’t know whether to hug him or hate him, but neither one seemed quite right, so I just sat there watching him walk in the front door and glance around, looking for me. If I wasn’t already rattled, his strong resemblance to Phoebe would have been more than enough. Same lanky frame. Same deep-cocoa-brown complexion and big dark eyes. I’d have to be sure he never saw a picture of her. It would be like looking in the mirror.

  I waited until he turned in my direction and then raised my hand in case he had trouble recognizing me. Thank God I had on my own little outfit. If I’d waved in that wrap-and-drape dress my breasts would probably have popped out of their own accord. His smile when he saw me was worth the price of admission all by itself. He looked so genuinely happy and excited to see me that I couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Catherine,” he said, “you haven’t changed a bit.”

  Not true. I’m ten pounds heavier and a whole lot smarter. I stood up so he could kiss my cheek, but held on to both of his hands so a hug was out of the question.

  “You haven’t either.” Which was also untrue. He was still as fine as ever, and that smile was still a killer, but there was something so deeply troubled, so absolutely sad in his eyes that I almost looked away.

  “It’s been too long,” he said, folding his coat and resting it on the back of the chair as he slid in across from me.

  “Almost twenty years.”

  He shook his head. “That’s when you know you’re getting old. When you’ve had friends for over twenty years.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I think we’re in our prime.”

  “You certainly are, but I think the jury’s still out on me.”

  Before I could ask him what he meant by that, the waiter came by to take his drink order, and B.J. ordered a cup of espresso. I was surprised. Even in college, B.J. had been a big drinker. He never worried about it, but I did.

  “Fighting jet lag?”

  “Not exactly. I stopped drinking a couple of years ago. Stopped smoking last Christmas. Caffeine is about the only vice I’ve got left.”

  “What made you stop?”

  He shrugged and ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. “Being a drunk is an occupational hazard for foreign correspondents. We wear it like a badge of honor. A rite of passage. You spend all day in a war zone or a refugee camp or a guerilla hideout, and then at night you go to the bar in the well-guarded hotel where you’re staying and swap war stories with other reporters and the occasional American expatriate who can’t remember why he came there in the first place. I saw myself becoming one of those guys, and it wasn’t who I wanted to be anym
ore. So I came home.”

  The waiter brought the tiny cup of espresso with a curl of lemon on the saucer beside it. There was a lot more to that story, but I was the one who had demanded that we talk in present tenses, so I didn’t pursue it.

  “Louis sent his regards,” I said, trying to sound casual, like I thought they had talked a few months ago. “And told me to warn you he’s going to try to talk you into writing something for the Sentinel.”

  “I’m open to persuasion,” B.J. said, taking his cue from me as if there had been no twenty-year break in their communication. He took a long swallow of the steaming espresso that practically emptied the cup. I repressed a motherly warning about the dangers of drinking too-hot liquids. “How’s he doing?”

  “Same as always. He also said to tell you he can’t afford you.”

  “He never could,” B.J. said, smiling in spite of his sad eyes. “How’s the paper doing?”

  “Not good,” I said. “Louis writes great editorials, but he can’t get any subscribers, and most of the advertising’s dried up, too. He’s looking for investors, but so far nobody’s turned up.”

  B.J. shook his head. “That’s a damn shame. The Sentinel was a great paper. Not just a great black paper—a great paper.”

  I understood his need to make the distinction. It’s like the Brother Ruben argument. You never had to love the Sentinel because of race pride. You could admire it the same way you would the Washington Post. Because it was good.

  “It’s not dead yet,” I said, feeling suddenly protective. “Louis is determined. Will you have time to call him while you’re here?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll be around for three or four days. All my leads seem to take me to Atlanta, so I’ve got some poking around to do.”

  Was that too much time or not enough? Too much time for what? Why did I sound so calm and feel so crazy? I took a sip of my wine, glad he couldn’t see the insane conversation going on in my head. Calm down, I cautioned myself. Just calm down!

  “Why don’t you tell me about your story?”

  He polished off his espresso and pushed the delicate cup aside. “Straight down to business, huh?”

  I just smiled. Damn right.

  “My original idea was a long piece about the impact of refugees on African-American urban populations, but that was way too big a topic. No way to get my arms around it.”

  I nodded. “So you narrowed it down?”

  “To women. The experience of being a female refugee is completely different from the experience of being a man. My story will focus on that difference.”

  “Why?”

  If he was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. “Because in any population the treatment of the women and children always reflects the true values of that community. It hits people closest to where they really live.”

  Great answer, I thought. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “That’s because you said it perfectly the first time.” He grinned.

  He was right. The summer we became lovers, we had tackled the issue of sexism head-on. Not because he wanted to, but because I had just taken a History of Feminism class at Spelman and I was fired up to spread the good word.

  I laughed. “No wonder it sounded so good! You learned your lesson well!”

  “That’s because I respect the narrative of women’s lives,” he quoted me again, sounding like a fourth grader about to win the citywide spelling bee. One of the most intense discussions we ever had centered around men’s inability to “recognize and respect the narrative of women’s lives.” B.J. had denied any such blind spot, and it had taken all my powers of persuasion to convince him that his response to the question was proof enough of the truth of my premise.

  I raised my glass. “Move to the head of the class.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “How are we doing so far?”

  I started to pretend I didn’t know what he meant, but it’s hard for a woman who’s taught a man the intricacies of how not to be a sexist asshole to claim ignorance of the dynamics in a moment as basic as this one.

  “We’re doing fine,” I said, waving at our waiter so we could order. “So far, so good.”

  31

  Two hours later we had eaten everything that was put before us. I’m sure any strict Freudian worth her hourly fee would talk about sublimation of a sexual urge into a more acceptable hunger, but so what? The food gave us something to do while we talked. And did we ever talk! It was as if we had picked up a conversation where we’d left it yesterday. We established that we were both single and unattached. I told him about Babylon Sisters and Mandeville Maids and Amelia’s law firm and Miriam’s sister going missing. He told me about information he was getting that there was a regular flow of illegal aliens between Miami and metro Atlanta, basically for the big office-park and discount-store cleaning contracts. He was focusing on Haitian women because his contacts told him there were a lot of Haitians being stashed in slum housing all over an economically depressed neighborhood called Vine City. Poor brown people to camouflage other poor brown people. These guys were shameless.

  We had each heard the whispers about forced prostitution, but nothing on the record yet. I invited him to take a look through my files Friday afternoon. It was a testament to how comfortable I was by the end of the evening that I didn’t feel strange telling him to come by the house. He felt like a friend again, and I relaxed into the moment.

  “Louis heard a rumor a couple of years ago that you were writing a book.”

  B.J. groaned and looked slightly embarrassed. “I’d like to know who started that rumor. People keep asking me about a book that I never said I was writing. Then they feel bad for me because I haven’t finished it.”

  “So I guess that pretty much disqualifies it as pleasant after-dinner conversation?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is that what this is? Pleasant after-dinner conversation?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “We’ve conducted our business. We’ve had our dinner. Now we’re supposed to wind down with a little neutral chitchat, say good night, and go home.”

  “You’ve never engaged anybody in neutral chitchat in your life.”

  “People can change,” I said.

  “No, they can’t, except to get more like what they already are.”

  “That’s a depressing thought,” I said. “What about personal growth, spiritual transformation, sudden bursts of cosmic consciousness?”

  “All of that is what makes you aware of who you are.” He smiled and sat back. “But getting you closer to your essence doesn’t change it.”

  “So your best advice is to ‘go with the flow’?” He was getting so serious, I had to tease him just a little.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said, leaning forward again, ignoring my teasing, serious as hell. The restaurant was filling up, and even at our cozy corner table, the buzz could be distracting.

  I leaned forward so I wouldn’t miss anything. “I’m all ears.”

  “Right before I came home, I was held hostage in Afghanistan. There were two other American guys, and they took all three of us because somebody had told them we were CIA and they wanted to be sure before they cut our heads off.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, but the words sent a chill through me. He had been moving around in a part of the world where that had already happened to an American journalist.

  “My God! What did you do?”

  He shrugged. “We waited. That was all we could do. They took us to a village way up in the mountains and stashed us in their tiny little jail. Nobody even knew we were there. We had never seen these guys before, so all we knew was that they were really young and really pissed off at America.”

  It was strange to hear what he was saying in the middle of the dinner hour in a popular Atlanta restaurant. We may as well have been on another planet.

  “There were some Afghani guys in
the other cell, and the guards kept coming in every couple of hours and beating the shit out of them. We could hear it all even though we couldn’t see them, and it sounded pretty bad. One of the guys with us completely freaked out. Curled up in the corner like he was trying to be invisible. The other guy kept trying to talk to the guards in English, even though they didn’t understand a word he was saying.”

  “What about you?” I was beginning to understand the expression in his eyes. Did the fear you must feel in that situation ever go away?

  “I was hanging in there pretty good, trying to stay cool and hoping for the best. Then one morning, after we heard them beating the Afghani prisoners half the night, everything got real quiet. Then they brought out this guy’s body. It wasn’t even wrapped in a sheet or anything, and we could see how bad it was. They did everything to this guy. As they dragged him past our cell, one of the guards laughed and pointed at him, then pointed at us. That’s when I realized we probably weren’t going to make it out either. It looked like we were going to die there.”

  He paused and took a sip of water, tried to smile, but couldn’t pull it off. “You know how people always say when you think you’re going to die, your whole life passes before your eyes?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re right, but in my case, it wasn’t just a quick flash. It was like watching a full-length feature. I lay there on that hard little pallet and blocked out everything around me and just watched the story of my life play out inside my head. The whole thing, starting with my mother’s voice, my father’s hands, on through the years, good times and bad, ups and downs—”

  The caffeine was kicking in, and B.J.’s words tumbled out in a rush. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this story, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be in the pleasant-postdinner-chitchat category. He stopped himself suddenly, sat back again, and took a deep breath. He looked lost for what to say next.