Babylon Sisters

by Pearl Cleage

  “I’m okay,” she whispered.

  Over her shoulder, Miriam and a young woman I immediately knew was Etienne were sitting on the bed in the windowless room holding hands. One woman was lying down on the bed with her hands over her face, and two other women were sitting on the floor, their frightened eyes full of hope that I had come to save them. I could tell they had all been crying.

  “Is everybody okay?” I made my voice louder than it needed to be. I had to suck the victim energy out of this room, and all I had to use was the sound of my own fearlessness.

  They all nodded, and I looked at Wilson and the two young guards standing in the doorway, my arm still around Phoebe’s shoulders. There were three of them and seven of us, even if we were scared. I wondered if they had guns.

  “Can I speak with them alone for a minute?” I said, still talking loudly.

  The girls were watching me closely. Even the one on the bed had taken her hands away from her face and opened her eyes.

  Wilson frowned at me, and the two wannabe Wilsons did, too. “Say what you have to say right here.”

  I released Phoebe gently, pushed her back toward the others, and lowered my voice as if I wanted him to hear me, but not the women. His boys leaned forward, too, like two little evil clones of their ponytailed boss.

  “They’re all virgins,” I said. “I want to show them some things that will make it easier for them.”

  Wilson’s face was a mask of meanness. “Ain’t nobody tryin’ to make it easy for them.”

  The two guards snickered and punched each other.

  “And better for their sponsors,” I said as suggestively as I could.

  “They ain’t supposed to know how to do nothin’,” he snarled. “They just supposed to be virgins.”

  “But . . .” But what?

  “Shut up,” he said, turning back to the guards. “I’m going back downstairs. Tape them up like I showed you and then come get me.”

  The shorter boy looked startled by the request, but said nothing.

  “You got the piece?” Wilson said to the taller of the two guards, who had a baby face in spite of all his gold teeth.

  The kid fumbled quickly through his oversize pockets and came up empty. “I musta left it in the car,” he said sheepishly.

  Wilson looked disgusted. “Then go get it!”

  The kid hitched up his pants and shuffled off down the hall as quickly as he could without them falling off his slim hips and settling around his ankles.

  Wilson turned back to the first guard, who was still standing there looking uncomfortable. “You got the tape or what?”

  The kid looked like he’d rather have misplaced the gun. These guys were as bad at being guards as they were at setting fires. We can take them! I thought. If I can just get these girls not to be too terrified to move, we can take them!

  “Leroy said he was gonna get it,” he said, pointing accusatorily down the hall after his long-gone comrade.

  “You get it,” Wilson growled. “Or I’m gonna blow your stupid brains out.”

  The kid started down the hall at a trot, holding his britches with one hand. “I’m gonna get the tape, man. I know where he put it at, so I’ll be right back.”

  Wilson turned around and looked at our tiny, cowering band and then back to me. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m gonna get the damn tape and do you bitches myself.”

  Then he slammed the door and locked it behind him. Phoebe ran back to me, but this time so did Miriam, dragging Etienne, who was even lovelier in person than she was in her picture. I strained to hear Mr. Wilson’s footsteps to be sure he had really left us locked in, but unguarded. He had! He expected us to wait here for him to come back and tape us up like a bunch of hogs on their way to the slaughter. Well, he had the wrong bunch of girls. We might go down, but not without a fight!

  “What are we going to do, Mom?” Phoebe said, her voice shaking with fear. “Who are they? Are they serious about—”

  I cut her questions off. “They’re very serious, but so are we,” I said in a voice I’d never heard before. I wasn’t just Mom anymore. I was the voice of our resistance!

  “What can we do?” Miriam’s voice was almost a whimper.

  “You must all listen to me carefully and do exactly as I say.”

  Phoebe, Miriam, and Etienne stood together, watching me, wondering, I know, what I had in mind. I was wondering, too!

  “Go on, Mom,” Phoebe said softly. “We’re listening.”

  The two women on the floor nodded. The girl who had been lying on the bed sat up and held her knees close to her chest.

  “Do you speak English?” I said, aware of how little time we had.

  The girls sitting on the floor nodded yes. The one on the bed just looked at me.

  “Miriam, you translate for her,” I said.

  She nodded and went to sit beside the girl on the bed, translating for her softly as I talked as fast as I could without confusing them.

  “There are only two guards, plus Ezola and the guy with the ponytail. There are twice that many of us.”

  “But they have a gun,” Miriam whispered, like I might have overlooked it.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, hoping that it didn’t. My mind was racing ahead, trying to think, think, think. “If we stick together and you do exactly as I say, we’ll be all right. Do you believe me?” I looked around at their frightened faces. “Do you believe me?”

  Phoebe spoke up first, and her voice didn’t tremble. “I believe you, Mom.”

  “I do, too,” Miriam said, still sounding scared, but a little stronger.

  The first step in staying alive is always to believe you can, and I had never believed anything so strongly in my life. We had to stay alive. I hadn’t had a chance to tell them what I knew, and they hadn’t had a chance to tell me what they knew, and that exchange is what our lives are really about. Sometimes, it’s all we’ve got.

  “All right,” I said, “here’s what we’re going to do. . . .”

  That was when we heard the sirens. My heart leaped into my throat. Had the police followed us? Had our reinforcements finally arrived? The girls froze, and I did, too. Too scared to hope. Too scared not to.

  Then we heard the sound of cars screeching into the yard at high speeds, and then the sound of someone beating on the downstairs front door the way only cops do, and people shouting, glass breaking, more shouting, and somebody screamed. We didn’t know who it was, but we knew it wasn’t one of us. We were all present and accounted for, listening, praying, determined to be strong, but longing to be rescued just in case we weren’t strong enough.

  Phoebe was holding my hand, and Miriam was holding the other one, and I realized we weren’t huddling in a scared little clot anymore. We were standing in a circle, and we stayed in that circle even when we heard voices coming up the stairs, until I heard B.J. calling my name and I knew they had found us, deep in the middle of all those Georgia pines. Only then did I start hollering.

  “B.J.! In here! We’re in here!”

  Thank God! Thank God! Thank God!

  “In here!”

  “Stand back!” he shouted, and somebody hit the door hard enough to break that pitiful little lock, and there was B.J., right up front, and behind him, three of the biggest police officers ever, and Louis right behind them. Then we all started hollering at the same time and hugging one another and hollering some more, and the police officers asked us if we were okay and we said we were, and B.J. hugged me again, and all I could do was hug him back and try to realize it was over. It was finally over.

  “How did you find us way out here?” I said.

  “I told you I had your back.” And he hugged me again. Hard.

  “But how—”

  “Don’t worry about it now,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything later. I promise.”

  That was good enough for me. I gave him another quick hug and looked around for Phoebe. Across the room, Louis was trying to get his arms around
her and Miriam at the same time, and the girls who had been sitting on the floor were hanging on Etienne, and the one who had been curled up on the bed was hanging on all three of them and crying and smiling, and so was I. Then Phoebe extricated herself from Louis and hurtled across the room back to me, and she was still crying a little bit, and I was, too, so we just stood there holding on to each other like we’d never let go, but then over her shoulder, I saw B.J. watching us with such longing, and I knew he was waiting to see if this was the time for his introduction, and even in the midst of all the confusion, I knew it was.

  This was not the way I wanted it to be for them. This was nothing like the perfect moment I had imagined. But if there’s any truth to the saying, “All’s well that ends well,” it was perfect enough indeed. So I turned my daughter around to face the smiling stranger, and took her hand in that mad swirl of people and policemen and answered prayers.

  “Phoebe,” I said as if we were alone in the room. “I’d like to introduce you to your father.”

  She squeezed my hand so hard I swear she almost broke it, but I didn’t care. “Daddy?” she whispered.

  He didn’t say a word. He just opened his arms and she walked right into them like she belonged there, which, of course, she did.

  74

  If this were a fairy tale, I could tell you that on the same morning I went to the headquarters looking for the girls, in the middle of her breakfast at Thelma’s, Celine Hudson suddenly remembered hearing her escorts talking about a club near Miss Mandeville’s house, and when she called to tell B.J., Sergeant Lawson of the Atlanta Police Department knew exactly where it was. Once they had a starting point, it was only a matter of time before they discovered Ezola’s evil hideaway and burst in at the very last second, just like the heroes do in the movies, right before everybody lives happily ever after.

  If this were a fairy tale, I could tell you that Ezola and Sam and Desiree and the ponytailed Mr. Wilson and his two sorry commandos all went off to jail for a long, long time. I could tell you that the prostitution ring was broken up and the girls found homes with families who loved them, and Precious Hargrove took over as interim president of Mandeville Maids and hired me as her vice president of operations, so nobody lost a job during the investigation, including Celine Hudson, who was getting her GED and trying to lose a few pounds.

  If this were a fairy tale, I could tell you that Miss Iona finally retired from the Sentinel, and she and Mr. Charles took a cruise around the world and then another one. I could tell you that Louis and B.J. made the Sentinel the fastest-growing black newspaper in the country, with fifty thousand paid subscribers and a staff of four full-time reporters. I could tell you that Aretha had her baby and Kwame cut the cord, and Hank Lumumba announced his candidacy for city council from West End, and Blue and Regina Hamilton did a fund-raiser, and Phoebe and her daddy were thick as thieves.

  If this were a fairy tale, I’d probably have to confess that two days before Christmas, Amelia and I put on our long white gowns, and Phoebe stood up with us while Amelia married Louis at the same ceremony where I married B.J., and we promised to be true until death do us part. But this isn’t a fairy tale, so I have to tell you the truth: Amelia and I both wore red.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PEARL CLEAGE is the author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day . . . , which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, and Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do, as well as two works of nonfiction: Mad at Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth and Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot. She is also an accomplished dramatist. Her plays include Flyin’ West and Blues for an Alabama Sky. Cleage lives in Atlanta with her husband.

  Also by Pearl Cleage

  NOVELS

  Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do

  I Wish I Had a Red Dress

  What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day . . .

  NONFICTION

  Mad at Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth

  Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot

  Babylon Sisters is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Pearl Cleage

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  One World is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cleage, Pearl.

  Babylon sisters : a novel / Pearl Cleage.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3553.L389B33 2005

  813′.54—dc22 2004051909

  One World Books website address: www.oneworldbooks.net

  eISBN: 978-0-345-48216-7

  v3.0