The Ten Girls to Watch

by Charity Shumway

Back at the archives, an air of abandonment hovered in the hallways as usual. From the doorway of my closet, I spotted the blinking voice mail light. More voice mail? Great, what was this going to be? XADI telling me I’d been doing such a good job they decided they didn’t need me anymore? Elliot telling me he’d decided he didn’t want to be “friends” anymore either? (Maybe I was a little more disappointed by my sleep-study rejection than I’d let myself admit.) Fortunately, the voice mail was from Robyn Jackson’s assistant. She’d called just a few minutes before I arrived. I dialed her back immediately, and she patched me right through to Robyn.

  In 1968, Robyn Jackson became the first black woman ever to grace the cover of a major women’s magazine. In the photo her skin was smooth, her cheeks peachy and glowing over the top of her burnt-orange turtleneck sweater. From her perfectly peaceful smile, you’d think it was nothing to crash through barriers. She was just another girl, heading to a football game. Except she wasn’t. She never was. She started her own business as a teenager. By the time she was in college, the cleaning service she ran employed over a hundred maids, including her mother and all her aunts.

  These days, she wasn’t exactly famous, but she was if you talked to the right people. Anyone who knew money knew Robyn Jackson. Her company, Madison Capital, invested its gazillions in real estate, renewable energy, biotech, and retail. In my reading I even came across several reports of Madison’s rumored bids for Mandalay Carson.

  “So glad we’re connecting!” Robyn girlishly chirped. I felt a little embarrassed for having imagined she’d have more of a husky Aretha Franklin voice.

  After some initial chitchat, she told me the story of the magazine cover. The editor who took over Charm in 1967 apparently imagined a different approach than her forebearers; at her direction, in 1968 academics joined the criteria upon which the Ten Girls to Watch were judged, a factor that certainly helped Robyn.

  That year each of the ten girls had been photographed individually during their weeklong trip to New York, and a few days later the editor called Robyn aside during one of their lunches and said, quick as can be, “Your photo is running on the cover. It was the most beautiful shot, hands down.”

  Robyn stopped her story at that point and said, “I always appreciated that—her emphasizing that the beauty of the photo was the deciding factor, not anything political. I think she was telling the truth, though it’s now obvious to me that it was a little more complicated than that—she took a huge risk when she made that judgment. But she was devoted to beauty and empowering women, and I endlessly admire people who keep themselves to the standards they set.”

  I told her how exciting it was to see a woman at the top of what was so often thought of as a men’s profession.

  “Let me tell you, Dawn,” she said, chuckling a bit, “money is power. Anyone who tells you it isn’t—they’re kidding themselves. Most women won’t tell you they want power. There’s something ugly in that word for women. And I understand that. Believe me, as a black woman I particularly understand that. But power is only a dirty word when you don’t have any. Women are never going to rise up and take their rightful place as long as they’re afraid of power.”

  I felt the weight of my fingers clacking as I typed her words. I wanted to say money didn’t matter. I had really believed that as a college student, back when I didn’t have money but had all the access to libraries and leather couches and boathouses and institutional legitimacy I could have ever wanted. But now, I was pretty sure she was right. I felt keenly aware that Robyn was only talking to me because I was calling on behalf of Charm, which was part of Mandalay Carson, which was rolling in dough. I tried not to think about how the conversation would, or rather wouldn’t, have gone if I, Dawn West of Milldale, Oregon, had just called her up on my own.

  But I was indeed calling from Charm, and so we continued pleasantly along and turned the conversation to Robyn’s family. She told me about her daughter who’d just started college and wanted to become a journalist. Perhaps because this made me feel validated, even if my hold in the field of journalism was currently tenuous at best, I immediately offered up my contact information and the contact information of every friend from college who had gotten even close to having a journalism-related job. I hoped I offered not because Robyn owned half the office towers in Manhattan but because she crooned and giggled as she talked about her kid with such obvious adoration, but I couldn’t be sure.

  After Thursday’s Robyn Jackson talk, Friday was all discouragement. E-mails sent to addresses that bounced back. Lost trails and fruitless phone calls. No bigwigs returning my messages. And the saddest story about a 1985 winner. On tanyakingscholarship.org, I found this:

  My sister Tanya was my best friend. She taught me to love life and shoot for the stars. This website is dedicated to Tanya’s art, to her memory, and to helping deserving young people who are following in her footsteps. It’s also dedicated to raising awareness of depression and prescription drug dependence. Tanya didn’t hold back in life, and I know she would want me to share her story in hopes of helping others through their struggles.

  The scholarship section of the website detailed the application process. Undergraduate women of color studying either music or film were encouraged to apply for one of three ten-thousand-dollar scholarships to be given out annually. “About Tanya” featured clips of films and shows she’d directed, including a number of episodes of the PBS show American Experience. In one short film, she strung together clips of dozens of women who remembered lynchings of their family members. “About Tanya” also included a section called “Tanya’s Story” written by her sister.

  In 1998, Tanya adopted a six-year-old boy, Anthony. In 2000, Tony disappeared from their Baltimore backyard. Two weeks later, his body was found mutilated and abandoned in the woods less than a half mile from their home. The murder case was still open when Tanya was killed in a car accident in 2002. Earlier that year Tanya had been caught seeing multiple doctors in order to receive multiple prescriptions for antianxiety medication, painkillers, and antidepressants. The morning she’d driven into the Patapsco River, the autopsy reported, she’d taken a massive overdose of Xanax. Tanya’s sister encouraged everyone struggling through pain, battling depression, or feeling themselves in the clutches of darkness to reach out, to seek help, to pray. She then listed resources: narcotics anonymous web listings, grief counseling referral sites, suicide help lines, support groups for parents who’ve lost children. At the end of the page, she wrote, “My love, Tanya and Tony’s love, and God’s love to you all.”

  I slowly scrolled through the site with one of my hands half covering my face, as if not fully reading the words could somehow undo them. I’d been looking at Tanya’s photo from the magazine, an artsy profile shot, expecting to have the beautiful woman from the picture on the phone any minute. Instead, I blinked the mist away from my eyes, then left my desk and walked aimlessly through the shelves of floor –2 for a while. When I returned, I made a simple note in my spreadsheet. “Tanya King: deceased.” Then, thinking that wasn’t enough, I added “music and film memorial scholarship: tanyaking scholarship.org.” Maybe one of the TGTW winners for this year could apply, or perhaps we could invite Tanya’s sister to the gala in her stead.

  Finally, after a day of so much discouragement, five o’clock arrived, and Elliot once again knocked on my door, this time to take me to Boston. I’d been jumpy all day, imagining I was hearing his footsteps every time I detected the slightest rustle. I turned at what seemed like an imagined footfall, the hundredth time I’d turned thinking I’d heard him, but this time, I hadn’t imagined him. I caught him a second before his hand touched my door. He knocked anyway, holding my eyes as his knuckles lightly rapped on the wood.

  “Hey there,” he said. “What do you say we blow this joint?”

  “I was thinking I’d stick it out until six.”

  “Charm’s turning the screws?” He winked. “Oh, come on. We don’t want to pull in at midnight.
”

  “Okay, okay. Give me a minute to grab my stuff.” I surrendered.

  Elliot walked my way and perched on the edge of a stack of boxes.

  I attempted to close out of my e-mail and stack my notes and printouts with some semblance of grace, but I couldn’t shake the outside-myself awkward-actress feeling.

  I had packed the night before with the greatest of care. I’d made white chocolate cranberry scones for Helen and tied them up in a box with a gold satin bow. I’d picked up the latest collection of Alice Munro short stories for her and nicely wrapped and tucked that in my weekend bag as well. I’d cleaned my shoes. I’d packed two possible outfits for the reading, one dress, one pants and sweater combination. I’d folded everything fastidiously, as if I were the butler from The Remains of the Day.

  Finally, I dramatically pushed in my chair, picked up my bag, and said to Elliot, “All right, I’m all yours.”

  “Really?” he replied in a hopeful, flirty voice.

  Eleven-year-old Dawn reared to life, and instead of flirting back, I ignored this comment.

  “So are you parked near home?” I asked.

  “You think I’m making you schlep all the way to Brooklyn?” he said. “How meager your expectations, my dear. I’m parked in the garage out back.”

  I gave him a wide-eyed look, and he nudged me with his shoulder. He took my bag and we rode the elevator up, silently smiling.

  Then, just as we approached the lobby doors, Ralph rounded the corner. When he saw us, his friendly face took on an expression I’d never seen before—a smirk. A hot shot of humiliation flashed in my brain. Did Charm send all its marginal employees to work in the archives? Had Ralph seen Elliot do this precise walk with other girls before?

  “My man!” Elliot said, putting his hand out to shake Ralph’s.

  Ralph returned the greeting. His eyes grazed right over me, as if walking with Elliot made me simply an accessory.

  “Have a good weekend, Ralph,” I said, trying to reclaim my place.

  He mumbled something back. It might have been “You too,” but I couldn’t really tell.

  In the elevator, Elliot leaned over and kissed my cheek. Despite Ralph, I felt the blurry buzz I’d felt on the Brooklyn Bridge creeping back into me.

  When we arrived at his sensible blue Honda, he drop-kicked the front bumper and said, “Check this dent. I bargained seven hundred dollars off the price thanks to this baby.”

  Robert swore by BMWs. The contrast was enough to make me want to pull Elliot into the Honda, make out with him like crazy, then tell him all my bargain-hunting secrets: Honey Bunches of Oats are always cheapest at the drugstore; never buy anything online without searching for a coupon first; appetizers are large enough to serve as entrées at almost every single restaurant . . . When he opened the door, I acted on at least one part of my plan (sharing all my bargain-hunting secrets would have taken far too long). It was well after five o’clock when we pulled out of the garage.

  We eked through traffic for a full hour before we escaped the city, but when we finally hit the Saw Mill Parkway, we started cruising. Until we hit the lights. How were there so many of them? Stopped alongside a construction site, Elliot said, “Have I ever told you about my lists? One of my best ones is my list of port-o-potty companies. Dr. John over there,” he said, motioning to a green port-o-potty, “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “I keep lists too!” I said, thrilled to be able to come back with something I thought he’d find funny. “I’ve got a great misheard-expressions one: skimp milk, windshield factor. But I think my best one is my food spoof celebrity names: Tuna Turner, Catherine Feta Jones . . .”

  “Oh, we’re coming back to those, but first we’ve got to deal with Honey Bucket, Call-A-Head, Mr. John . . . Dr. John there is upping the game. He may be heralding a whole new age of honorific porta-johns.”

  We moved from one list to another as we finally broke free of the lights. Bond movie titles: Midnight Never Fades, Dawn Never Forgets (my personal favorite). Names I would consider should I ever become a romance novelist: Brooks Reverie, Constance Waters. Animal group names: pod of whales, pride of lions, murder of crows, clutch of doves. Bad company names: Krazy Kuts (Crazy and Cuts have the same first letter to begin with—why the switch? And does anyone actually want a krazy kut?), Bake My Day (confrontational muffins? No thank you).

  This segued to bad ideas we’d executed on ourselves. We were passing through Waterbury, Connecticut, when I told him the story of the summer in college I decided to save money and eat nothing but Easy Mac. It was great, until July when I started looking pale and had three nosebleeds in a week. A lesson for the ages: Easy Mac is not a robust source of Vitamin C. It’s a strange day when University Health Services doesn’t even test to see whether you’re pregnant; they just tell you you have scurvy, and it turns out they’re right.

  Elliot reported that he’d permed his own hair in high school.

  “I give you scurvy and you come back with a perm? Weak,” I said.

  “I could get all serious and talk about bad marital decision making, but I don’t think you want to go there.”

  I suddenly felt guilty that I hadn’t read his book yet. Guilty and petty. I should have read it. I would have had I not been passive-aggressively reacting to him being “out of town.”

  I waited a second too long to reply, and he said, “Did I just do a Debbie Downer feline AIDS thing?”

  “No, no, not at all,” I said. “Or yes, sort of. I haven’t read your book yet. I’m so sorry.”

  “Phew. Don’t apologize. I’m totally relieved. That’s the problem with memoir. You write it, and then it’s all out there.”

  This was the flip side of Helen’s “write the truth” advice. “I can only imagine,” I said. “I’m scared enough when I write fiction. It’s not like my mom isn’t going to know the stories are about her. But at least we can all pretend.”

  “So true, Kelly Burns. So true.”

  “How did your ex-wife take it when the book came out?” I said, feeling a little daring at the direct mention of the ex-wife.

  “I don’t know, actually. Susan and I haven’t talked since the day we signed the papers.”

  All I could think of to offer was another feeble “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s for the best.”

  “How long were the two of you together?” I asked.

  “We started dating when we were sixteen, and we got married when we were twenty-one and then divorced when we were twenty-six. So ten years or five years, depending on how you count.”

  He said it all so easily, without ever looking away from the road. Like he was listing the classes he was taking or his favorite songs. And then he said, “There’s part of me that still loves her. And part of me knows we could have made it work. But I guess the way I think about it is a little like binding your feet. You can wrap them all snug and maybe they feel fine for a while, but then your feet get bigger, and it’s terrible. You can push through the pain and learn to do everything you need to do on your tiny feet. And maybe that’s a prize-worthy choice. But Susan and I decided we couldn’t do it.”

  Everyone seemed to have shoe metaphors lately, and they were all trying so hard to get out of their shoes, their relationships, their careers. I just wanted some of those shoes in the first place. I could struggle with outgrowing them later.

  I said it must have been hard. He said it was. And though I didn’t say it aloud, I wondered whether he and Susan had really decided together, or whether he had decided. Maybe in her mind she’d been lovingly holding him tight until one day he cut her off and threw her away. I mean, Robert and I always both knew we weren’t working, but somehow it always felt as if he was the one saying it out loud and doing something about it.

  “Are you in touch with all your exes?” Elliot asked, feigning nonchalance. Or at least it seemed like feigning to me, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he had dated so many women that discussion of exes
was nothing to him.

  Once again, I was suddenly aware of our age gap. Clarifying that I only had one ex was like shoving my inordinate youth into a beaming spotlight. Look at me, I’m practically an adolescent, then jazz hands. In college, I’d never ached to be older, but now, my age was like a disability. When I said “twenty-three,” people’s voices turned creamy and condescending. “You’re so young!” they clucked. Which essentially meant, “You’re too young to do anything real, but it’s cute that you think otherwise.” One of the reasons I thought my Ten Girls calls often went so well was that my age wasn’t immediately apparent over the phone.

  “We’re in touch off and on” was the response I finally settled on, hoping it had an easygoing and experienced ring.

  Elliot waited for me to go on, and when I didn’t he tried to take up the conversational slack. “Charm asked me to do a column where I called all my exes and asked them what they thought I should have learned from our relationship. I declined.”

  I laughed, and then attempted to change the subject. “So tell me about the friends you’re visiting in Boston this weekend,” I said. “Anybody special?”

  “Say ‘special’ again,” he said.

  “What, do I say it weird?”

  “Yes, say it again,” he said.

  “Special.”

  “God, you say it exactly like my mother. Where the ‘sh’ in the middle gets all the emphasis. I love it.”

  So I reminded him of his mother. I didn’t mind since it sounded like he liked his mom. I also noted he’d conveniently avoided answering my question.

  “Back off, fellow western-stater,” I said.

  He held up his hand. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  I listened. “No,” I said. And then a moment later, “Yes.” We both listened to the small rhythmic pinging, which quickly became both less rhythmic and less small. “That knocking?” I said, using what was now the only appropriate word.

  “I’m going to pull off at the next exit,” he said. But then, moments later, the knocking disappeared, just like that. The car sounded totally fine.