Babylon Sisters

by Pearl Cleage

  I stood up and went over to the refrigerator and removed a smiling photo of our daughter and handed it to him. He had no choice but to smile back.

  “Her name is Phoebe,” I said, “and she’s been looking for you.”

  53

  Sometimes things are harder than you think they’ll be, but sometimes things are so much easier that you can’t figure out why you waited so long. This was one of the latter times. B.J. and I started out by going back through the house so I could tell him the story behind the photographs he’d seen when we walked through earlier, tongue-tied. It was like a documentary film called The Life and Times of Phoebe Sanderson: The Story So Far. I had years of stories to share with him, and he had as many questions as I did answers.

  Did she really look like him, or was he “just trippin’ “? (She really did.)

  Did she feel like a citizen of the world? (Absolutely. Already spoke Spanish and French and was working on Arabic.)

  How old was she when she started walking? (Ten months. Never crawled at all. Just got up one day and walked across the room.)

  What did my mother say? (“My mother is the one who started that Baby Doll stuff, so you tell me.”)

  Was she a good rider? (She can jump a four-rail fence with her eyes wide-open.)

  I took him upstairs and let him see her room. He was careful not to touch anything, but there were her dolls lined up on the shelf above her complete collection of The Diaries of Anaïs Nin and every book Alice Walker ever wrote. There was her closet, with last year’s assortment of clothes that didn’t fit this year’s style requirements. On her wall was an Outkast poster and one of a smiling Audre Lorde with her famous quote about not having time to be afraid when she was using her strength in service of her vision.

  There was her bulletin board and her desk. There was her old computer that she had replaced with a sleek new laptop, and a spray of dried roses from Amelia’s garden. There was a framed picture of her in Jamaica last summer, standing next to a tiny Rastafarian woman whose dreadlocked hair was so long it dragged the ground behind her like so many snakes in the dust. Amelia had briefly tried to grow dreads, hoping to match the woman’s Rapunzelian length, but she was too vain to survive the Buckwheat stage, when everybody kept asking when she was going to get her hair done.

  When we arrived back in the kitchen, I put on a pot of coffee while B.J. stood in front of the fridge, still studying the snapshots.

  “How much does she know about me?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “She thinks I don’t know who you are.”

  He looked at me. “How would you not know who I was?”

  “I told her she was conceived during my wild college days, and her father could have been any one of a number of old casual lovers.”

  “You never had any wild college days.”

  I put sugar and cream on the table for me, since he always took his coffee black. “She didn’t believe me either.”

  “Smart girl. Why would you tell her something like that?”

  It seemed so ridiculous now, I could hardly remember. “Seemed like the best way to make sure she never came looking for you.”

  He ran his hand over the photograph of Phoebe holding a fistful of Louis’s sunflowers and smiled at his daughter. “But she came looking for me anyway, didn’t she?”

  He laughed out loud when I told him about Phoebe’s futile quest for DNA samples from strangers, and I realized it was already becoming a funny story to illustrate a rocky moment just before everything turned out fine.

  “She’s stubborn,” I said, pouring two mugs of coffee and coming to stand beside him. “Gets it from her father.”

  “I’ve never kept a secret for eighteen years in my life!”

  “That wasn’t because I was stubborn. That was because I was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  In the picture, Phoebe’s bright eyes were twinkling at the sight of us standing there together.

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “It was so long ago.”

  He turned toward me. “You really are a woman of mystery, you know that?”

  Before I could agree or demur, Amelia appeared at the back door and tapped on the window.

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said when I opened the door and she spotted B.J. standing beside the refrigerator, both of us grinning like Cheshire cats.

  “You’re right on time,” I said, taking her hand and drawing her inside. “I want to introduce you to Phoebe’s father.”

  54

  To say Amelia and Louis were happy that I had told B.J. about Phoebe doesn’t do justice to all the kissing and crying and backslapping and storytelling that consumed the rest of the evening. They were beyond delighted. B.J. was still a little overwhelmed, but he pored over the scrapbooks I lugged out as if he were in search of the secret of life, and maybe he was. By the time he left at midnight, we were both exhausted and exhilarated. There were no more ghosts in sight, but Phoebe was now a tangible presence in both of our lives, and until we got adjusted to it, our shadow dancing was on hiatus. That was fine with me. One step at a time.

  The good thing was, our schedules were going to impose a brief cooling-off period whether we wanted to or not. B.J. was on a flight back to Miami this afternoon for an overnight trip to tie up a few more loose ends. He knew he was onto something when somebody left a message for him at the paper saying this wasn’t the sixties and he wasn’t Martin Luther King, so he’d better back off. B.J. said it was probably Quincy Davenport’s supporters, but Louis said that wasn’t their style. Whoever it was, both of them were fired up, and Miss Iona said it felt like the old days.

  I had so much work to catch up on, I didn’t have time to worry about it. Miriam arrived bright and early, happy to see Phoebe’s pictures back, and full of praise for B.J. I didn’t tell her he was Phoebe’s father. It was okay for Louis and Amelia to know, but before I made a general announcement, I wanted my wild child to hear it from me. Along with my apology for making her wait so long. Thanksgiving seemed to me the perfect time to make the introductions. It was only a couple of weeks away, and she was coming home whether she was speaking to me or not. They could meet face-to-face.

  I wanted it to be a special moment for them. I wanted it to be a moment they would always look back on with joy. A moment we could share as a family for the very first time. This was important, and it had to be perfect.

  Miriam was on the computer, so I answered the phone absentmindedly as I flipped through a stack of folders in seach of a long-lost invoice that was way overdue.

  “Babylon Sisters. Catherine Sanderson speaking.”

  “Catherine,” said that unmistakably high pitched voice that always surprised me. “Ezola Mandeville. Do you have anything to do with those articles the Sentinel is running about using refugees?”

  She was abrupt as always, but she didn’t sound annoyed.

  “I know the reporter and the publisher, but I don’t have any direct involvement in the stories themselves. Why do you ask?”

  “Because if you had, I was going to offer you a bonus.” Her voice was practically lilting, it sounded so genuinely pleased.

  “A bonus? Why?”

  “Since that story said some companies are using illegal aliens as maids, I can’t find enough maids to fill all the jobs I’ve got! Everybody’s scared of getting busted for hiring illegals, so they’re coming to me because they know I’m legitimate. It’s been great for business!”

  She sounded more like Sam every day. “That ought to help us in recruiting, too. Once people know that you’re treating people like human beings and paying them decent wages, the word will spread.”

  “It already has,” Ezola said. “The phone is ringing off the hook. Come have lunch with me so I can thank you in person, and maybe I’ll give you that bonus after all. How soon can you get down here?”

  I looked around at the mess on my desk. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  “Don’t b
e late,” she said. “Bonus or no bonus, I still expect you to come on time.”

  55

  When I arrived at Ezola’s office exactly forty minutes later, she had the nerve to look at her watch before she got up from behind her desk and came around to greet me.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she said, shaking my hand. As usual, she was wearing a dark dress, sensible shoes, and a string of pearls. “Please sit down.”

  Lunch was already laid out, but hidden under silver covers for the moment. Ezola liked to talk first and eat later. She ushered me over to one of the love seats and sat down beside me. I was surprised to see the large throne chair covered with a piece of plain black drape that obscured its bright gold and tufted red presence.

  Ezola saw me notice it and smiled. “That chair is ridiculous.”

  I looked at her to see if this was another test, but I couldn’t lie. I smiled back at her. “Completely absurd.”

  “I watched you the first day you came here, me in my great big foolish chair and you in that sawed-off one that made you have to look up to me even if you didn’t want to.”

  The woman never failed to surprise me. Of course she was conscious of what she was doing, but I never expected her to admit it.

  “You didn’t need all that to impress me.”

  She sat back and fingered her pearls with her stubby fingers. “I wasn’t interested in impressing you, Catherine. I intended to intimidate you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I used to be a maid, remember? Every person who walks in that door for the first time thinks they know more about everything than I know about anything. If I’m ever going to disabuse them of that notion, I have to make them understand that there’s a whole lot of things that I know better than they do, and the sooner they realize that, the better.”

  “I knew that before I walked in here. All that big chair made me do was wonder whether you knew it, too.”

  She stood up and walked slowly over to her glass wall and looked out at the atrium, where her beautiful building was showing off its skylight with random rainbows.

  “And what did you decide?”

  “I decided that you did.”

  “Good. It’s always dangerous to underestimate me.”

  “I never do.” And that was the truth. I thought she was strange and eccentric and smart and clearly extraordinary. Once she really trusted me, I thought, working with her would be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

  She came back to sit beside me. “I’m talking about Sam.”

  That came out of nowhere. “What about Sam?” Last time I checked, Sam was her personally designated eyes and ears and de facto favorite son.

  “I know it’s hard to believe,” she said, her voice sad and light as a feather. “But some information has come to me that Sam may be all up in this business with Quincy Davenport.”

  “With the slum houses?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you sure? He has always spoken of you and the work you’re doing here with great respect. I can’t imagine that he would jeopardize it for something like that.”

  “I have considered him like my own,” she said, getting up again and pacing around the room a little, but not in a quick, agitated way. More like an angry lion in a cage. “He’s helped me build the business to what it is today. He brought you in when we needed someone like you to help us.”

  She came back and sat down again. She was really upset about this and she couldn’t seem to light anywhere. “And now I need your help again.”

  The expectant look on her face required an answer. “What can I do?”

  Her whole body relaxed and her face softened immediately. “Oh, thank you, Catherine. Thank you!” She leaned over and took my hand. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I said, feeling like my generic response had been received with a lot more enthusiasm than it deserved. I hadn’t agreed to anything yet. Her thick little fingers felt strong and strange around my own, and I willed myself not to wriggle my hand out of her grasp like a restless child forced to talk to old people.

  “I want you to keep an eye on Sam.”

  My hand withdrew of its own accord. “You want me to spy on Sam?”

  I wondered if she usually recruited her spies this directly, and why she didn’t just give the job to whoever had been keeping an eye on B.J.

  “I want you to think about what it would do to our project and our credibility, mine and yours, if it turned out that the man we put in charge of our project was a part of all the things we’re fighting against.”

  She got up one more time and walked back over to the throne and pulled the black drape off. The chair looked even more ludicrous than it had the first time. She tossed the drape to the floor and sat down slowly, regally, her physical presence lending the chair a bit of dignity it did not deserve.

  “What if it turned out Sam was a con man, or worse, and even though we talk a good game, neither one of us was smart enough to see it lying there stinking right under our noses?”

  The image was effective, and she was right. That was the last thing we needed. We would lose all our political supporters, not to mention the nonprofits and social service agencies.

  “If that happens, I would have sat on this throne and made a fool of myself for nothing. Trying to stare down the white folks and scare the hell out of my own people, so I could build a business and save some women from taking the stuff I had to take from everybody just because I was a poor black woman with nothing to say and nobody to listen. My business will never be able to survive something like that, and it all will have been for nothing. My reputation and my word are all I’ve got, and Sam Hall isn’t going to take them from me without a fight.”

  She was working on my sisterhood, but I needed some specifics. “What can I do?”

  “Just tell me what you hear.”

  “What I hear about what?”

  “About Sam.” She hesitated.

  “And?”

  “And let me know if his name is going to be in the paper.”

  This was making me very uncomfortable. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s not my job.”

  Ezola leaned back in her throne and looked at me. “Then think of it as a favor.”

  She sounded like the Godfather, but this was different. There was nothing she could do to force me to spy, but was it really spying? I didn’t want Mandeville Maids to get burned because Sam was more interested in profits than people. This was a great project, and I wanted it to happen as much as Ezola did. I hadn’t come to work here because of him. I’d come because of her. Because as crazy as she was, she was doing something positive for some hardworking women who needed all the help they could get.

  “I’ll keep my ears open.”

  “Good.” She stood up immediately, her smile back in place to show that the conversation was officially over. “Now we can eat.”

  56

  Sam sent me an e-mail telling me how much he had enjoyed the interview with B.J. and promising to call when he got back from a two-day trip to Columbus. I wondered what he would say if he knew Ezola had such serious doubts that he was who he said he was. He didn’t really seem capable of that kind of duplicity, especially since he was next in line at Mandeville Maids, but money makes people do strange things, and my ears were still ringing with his greed is good lecture, so who was I to doubt Ezola’s instincts?

  Louis and Amelia had gone to see another big, bad Hollywood movie, and I had just put my work problems out of my mind and was curling up with last Sunday’s New York Times when B.J. called from Miami to ask me when I was going to tell Phoebe he was her father.

  “Thanksgiving,” I said. “She’ll be home from school, and you can spend some time with her then.”

  “Do we have to wait that long?”

  He sounded so disappointed, I almost said, We’ll call her as soon as you get back
, but that’s not the way I wanted to tell her. It made me feel good that he was anxious to establish contact, and I was even more determined to make that first meeting a magic moment.

  “She’s wanted this for a long time,” I said. “I want to make it special for her.”

  “Sort of like the father holding his baby up to the heavens at the beginning of Roots?”

  “She’s a little too big for you to hold her up over your head,” I said, not ready to be teased. Everything was too new for me to laugh at us yet. I was still trying not to cry. “I just want it to be perfect.”

  “It is perfect.”

  I smiled at the love already in his voice—and he hadn’t even met her yet. “You know, she thinks that getting to know you can protect her from getting her heart broken.”

  “What do you think?”

  There was no reason to lie. “I’m hoping it can do the same for me.”

  And he answered my truth with one of his own. “I love you, Cat.”

  “I love you, too, B.J. Good night.” And I clicked off before he could say more.

  It was important for me to understand that his love for me right now was all tied up in his love for Phoebe, and that was a good thing. It was even more important for me to be able to distinguish between his father love and mother-of-his-only-child love, and that other kind that exists between a man and a woman just because they are a man and a woman, not because they share a child.

  But I wasn’t required to do all of that tonight. How and why we loved each other would be a mystery we’d have to work on. Tonight, the fact that we did was good enough for me.

  57

  The issue of the Sentinel with B.J.’s Miriam story on the front page sold out before noon the day it hit the stands. People were moved by her story, outraged by her sister’s plight, and anxious to help. Louis was printing another full run that he planned to have on the street by midnight. If pimps needed the cover of darkness to thrive, the Sentinel was about to put some people out of business. The phones at the paper were ringing nonstop, and Miss Iona drafted one of the interns to help her field the offers that were pouring in for everything from free clothes to free housing.