I try to look up at Mama, but it’s like looking directly into the sun. Her eyes are just too intense. I try to move past her, but she doesn’t give any ground. She doesn’t move back or forward or step out of the way. I try to step around her, and that’s when I see it. But it happens so lightning fast, I have no time to react. Mama uses her left elbow to connect with my jaw. And suddenly, there’s this ringing sound in my ear.
* * *
I know how to make sure it doesn’t hurt as much. I just close my eyes and stand real still. The thing is, if you move around a lot, she has to move around a lot. And the extension cord might slip out of her hand. And as she quickly grabs it back up, she might catch it at the wrong end, and you risk getting the part with the plug on it across your face. And if you keep your eyes open, it makes your heart skip a beat every time you see it coming at you. So I stand there real still and hold my breath. And I make my brain drift somewhere far away. And soon, I’m not even in my bedroom anymore. I’m not naked. I don’t even really feel the lashes across my back. I feel like a jet plane, flying against the wind. The wind is hard and it beats at my back, but it’s not so bad. And I fly above the birds. And pretty soon, the wind becomes just a breeze. And if I keep holding my breath, I start feeling so light. Now I’m no longer a jet plane. I am one of the birds, flying in V formation. The breeze ruffles my feathers, but only a little. I’ve almost reached where I’m going. And soon, I’ll be able to land in a meadow full of flowers. I’ll be warm again, and I’ll be free.
It’s ten degrees cooler today than it was yesterday. I think on Eyewitness News two nights ago, Storm Field said it was going to be around sixty-two, but it feels even lower than that to me. I’m glad the park bench the old lady and I are sitting on is out in the open, with no trees shading it. That way, I can soak up as much of the sun as possible. Its warmth feels so comforting against my face.
We’re down at the edge of the lake, near this little gazebo.
“I just want to apologize,” I say. “For what I did at that store. It was stupid. It was just me not really thinking again. And I also want to apologize for Mama.”
“Were you punished?”
“Not really Mama’s nature to punish. She’s more of a ‘deal with the situation right then and there’ kinda person.”
Ms. Downer doesn’t say anything for a while. “Well, you don’t have to apologize to me for her. You can’t control what other people do or how they act. Besides, I think it’s understandable that she was upset.”
“What about my apology?” I ask. “Do you accept that?”
Instead of answering, Ms. Downer stands slowly and starts walking toward the lake.
“Ms. Downer,” I call out after her. But she keeps walking. I stay on the bench and watch her for a moment.
She finally stops once she reaches the water’s edge. I pick up her purse, which she left where she was sitting—I mean, we are in Brooklyn—and walk over to her. A group of ducks floats by a few feet away. I stand there listening to them quack. From behind us I can hear voices get louder, then trail off.
“Faye, I know I haven’t always been as forthcoming as I could have when you’ve asked me questions about certain things in my life. But it’s because I’m ashamed of some of the things I’ve done.” She lets out a big breath of air.
“You know, my mother thought I was foolish saying I was going to Hollywood to be in pictures. She said I’d just be hurt and ridiculed, and that my soul would be beaten down. And then there was the fact that I was married, with a young child. But there was something so strong inside me that was driving me.
“Nowadays, all the films seem to have big explosions and special effects that leave you speechless. When I was a little girl, there wasn’t even sound. Just a little music to accompany the action. I would save all my money and go to those silent pictures. And once the lights went down and the music started … I can’t explain what it did to me. Then one day, I saw this movie called The Homesteader. There was the most exquisite woman with this wealth of energy carrying that picture. She had beautiful light brown skin, which really stood out to me. I mean, the only people you saw with brown skin in pictures those days, well, they were cleaning the white man’s house or shining his shoes. And she moved as gracefully as the wind. She completely mesmerized me.”
I hear a rustling sound behind us and turn to see a fat jogger stuffed into a silver sweat suit. He looks like an oversized Jiffy Pop popcorn container. As he huffs and puffs on by, I start wondering where the nearest pay phone is, in case there’s going to be a need to dial 911.
“I always knew there was something else for me in life. Something bigger. Something better. Now, I had taken theater classes, and I could sing,” Ms. Downer continues. “I could dance. That’s where I met my husband, doing a show up in Harlem where I was the lead performer. But I always felt there was a ceiling … a limit to what I could do and how far I would be able to go. But then through fate, or divine intervention, I had a talent agent approach me right at the corner of Thirty-Third Street and Seventh Avenue one day and tell me I was pretty enough to be in front of the camera. I took a chance, with my husband’s blessing, and I went to Hollywood. We figured that within the year, we would take stock of things, and if I was working and making good money, he would quit his job and relocate with our daughter. But things happened so quickly for me, in a way I never planned; in a way it only ever happens in the movies. I was a bit of a novelty. ‘The Bolivian Bombshell’ was the term they were using.”
“I didn’t know you were from Bolivia,” I say.
“Never been there in my life. But I was just exotic-looking enough to have them intrigued. There was a fine line then. Too exotic, and you could scare off the masses. Just a little exotic, and they went crazy over you. Someone said I had a Bolivian mother and an American father, and everyone believed it. And I didn’t say anything different. Anyway, there was an instant buzz, and people started to invest in me. They believed I could become something very big. I believed it too. And I got a taste of a fairy-tale life. It was all my dreams coming true, from when I used to sit in the back of those theaters wishing I could be up on the screen. Within the first year, I had small parts in two movies. And they started talking about a starring vehicle for me. Something else happened within that first year. I fell in love with someone—a man who was not my husband. A producer named Sam, who was helping shape my career.
“It’s amazing how quickly I became consumed by my own ambition. How I became caught up in my own hype. Suddenly, my life in New York drifted further and further into the past, so much so that I no longer seemed to be able to associate with it. I got my husband to give me a divorce. I sent money back, loads of it, and swore him to secrecy about our relationship.
“He was a good man, my husband. Loyal and caring. I was never greatly in love with him, but I knew he could give me a nice, trouble-free life. I knew I would never go hungry being with him. When I became pregnant, he gave up all his dreams of being a performer and fell back on his electrical skills. Just so he could feed his new family.
“Anyway, once I was free to date who I wanted, I started spending more and more time with that producer, and I became as much a part of his being as he was of mine. He started confiding in me, telling me things he had never told anyone before. He said he wanted to marry me and that he needed to lay everything out on the table. No secrets. And some of the things he had done to get to where he was were terrible. Beyond terrible, but he admitted them to me. And I think I loved him more because of it.”
“Things like what?” I ask.
“That part I’ll keep hidden,” she says, with a sad smile on her face. “I figured his opening up was his way of saying he really did love me. I guess I didn’t realize he had so much inner turmoil. He just needed someone to be his sounding board. Anyone. But I decided that if he could be so open, I had no choice but to be the same with him—since our love was so great.” She lets out this strange little laugh. “And I had a sec
ret that was boring a hole through me. A very big one. And so one night, as we were relaxing in front of the fire, I got up and went to my suitcase. I took out some pictures I had hidden in the lining and I put them on the sofa.”
She motions for her purse and I give it to her. She pulls out her wallet and fishes through one of the compartments for a couple of old black-and-white pictures enclosed in plastic. She hands the first one to me.
“My husband and me on our wedding day.”
I try not to look shocked, but I’m pretty sure I don’t succeed. I think back to the picture on Ms. Downer’s counter, and I realize there wasn’t a shadow at all over that baby’s face. That baby was black. And now I understand why. The old lady’s husband is as dark as me—dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin.
“I thought people couldn’t get married back then if they were … you know. If they were different,” I say. “Wasn’t that a crime?”
“Edgar and I weren’t as different as you might think,” she says. But I’m not following her. And then she hands me another picture.
“My parents,” she says. “The picture is so old you might not be able to tell, but both my mother and father were what people used to call half-caste or mulatto.”
“Whoa” is about all I can come up with.
“That night when I showed Sam this picture, I felt lighter for getting such a heavy secret off my chest. I felt that it would bring us even closer. I thought that because he cared for me, my parents both being part black would have little effect on him. But after I shared my burning secret, he reacted with so much hatred and animosity, it was as if he became a different person. He told me to leave Hollywood, to just disappear without a trace, as if I had never existed. He told me he would do anything to prevent the shame this bit of information would cause him, his studio, and his family if the truth ever got out. He told me he’d have me killed if I didn’t leave. And the funny thing was, he represented himself as a man who believed in equality for everyone.
“I never meant to deceive anyone. I went to California knowing exactly who and what I was, hoping I could change things. I thought I would work in classy black films, like the ones Oscar Micheaux made. But fate intervened. Someone who just assumed I was South American found me, and I simply didn’t say anything to make him aware of the truth. There were lovely actresses like Nina Mae McKinney, like Fredericka Washington, and because they were black, their careers were so limited. Fredericka could pass for white, but she chose not to. I guess I could have made this choice too … but then wonderful things started happening so quickly, and before I knew it, there was no way to dig out of the hole I found myself in. My life was now a thousand times better than I could ever have imagined. I just decided I would go along with it. But unfortunately, with ‘passing’ came some monumental sacrifices. There was no way I could be seen with my half-black parents, with a black husband, with my daughter … so I made a decision I’ve lived to regret.
“In the end, I really did disappear. I went to France for a while, started a whole new life there. But I missed the adoration. I missed the life I had gotten accustomed to. I was so confused and unhappy. For a while, I just spiraled down. Went through a depression I thought I would never climb out from.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there quietly, stealing these little glances at Ms. Downer. I can’t believe she’s black like me. Well, maybe not completely like me, but partly. And I can’t believe how crazy her life has been.
“Faye, I’m telling you this now for a reason. I know I’m always talking about regrets and how one bad decision can affect so many other things in your life. I just want you to see that this doesn’t come from an empty place. This isn’t just about an old woman wanting to hear herself talk and pointing her finger and saying ‘Do as I say.’ It really does come from me not wanting your precious, young, promising life to end up in the sadness mine has. So when you ask if I accept your apology, of course I do. But I want to make sure it’s not a hollow one. I want to make sure you’re not just saying it because you think it’s what you’re supposed to say or because you think it’s what I want to hear. I want to make sure you’ll do your best to really think before you act, because sometimes what’s done can never be undone.”
I am completely freaking out. I just felt something tickle my right leg, and I’m quite certain it wasn’t a feather. I’m sure of this because I’m not outside on a field trip to the Botanic Garden, or in the yard at school, or even in Prospect Park. I’m in my kitchen, under the table, kneeling on the cold linoleum floor. And my nightie stops just below my knees, leaving the lower part of my legs very bare and very available to any of the nighttime critters that inhabit our apartment. If I wasn’t trying to be secretive, I would let out a scream that would wake the dead. See, I know it’s a cockroach. I can feel its nasty little legs brushing against my skin. I squirm and jerk my feet this way and that, but I have to be careful not to kick the metal legs of any of the dining chairs and wake Mama. If she comes out and finds me under the table with the telephone off its wall mount, along with a flashlight, a pen, and pages from a phone book, she will surely pop a blood vessel. I mean, I’m pretty sure I look as if I’m in the middle of some supersecret spy mission.
After one more backward kick, I no longer feel any creepy-crawlies on my body. I want to shine the flashlight behind me and make sure whatever was violating my person is really gone, but I decide it’s probably best not to. No telling what else I might find back there.
Though it might seem like it, I’m not losing my mind, camping out under my kitchen table in the dead of night. It’s been three weeks since I got that morsel of information about Ms. Downer’s daughter from that archivist, but I’ve finally figured out what to do with it. I’m going to try to undo the old lady’s greatest regret by finding her daughter and talking to her myself. I’m going to march right up to her and tell her just how much Ms. Downer loves her and still thinks of her every moment of every day of her life, and wants to be her mother again. I can’t stop imagining their first moments together after nearly half a century. I can’t stop imagining the joy and the tears and the laughter. The thought of that gives me the courage to remain on the cold kitchen floor despite the threat of an insect encounter and the sudden appearance of what would surely be a thoroughly aggravated Mama.
I came up with the idea in, of all places, Sister Margaret Theresa Patricia Bernadette’s class, then hoped and prayed the film buff would show up at Ms. Downer’s again during one of my visits. I figured I could somehow get him to give me the daughter’s address. But he never did turn up. And then the old lady started looking at me funny, telling me I was acting suspicious, so I just cracked and asked her when she was expecting another visit from him.
“William has gotten about as much information as he can from me. The book is more or less completed, so no more scheduled visits. I suppose if any other questions come up, I’ll get a call from him. Or maybe he’ll drop by if he feels like wasting an afternoon on a casual visit with an old woman.”
It’s not like I could have just come out and asked her for the film buff’s number, so I had to really put on my thinking cap. Anyway, there I was lying in bed a couple of nights ago being grossed out by the thought of what Mama and JCJ were doing in the bedroom right next to mine, when it dawned on me that I had enough information to find this Delaine Lawson person myself. I just needed to do some Charlie’s Angels–type investigating.
I couldn’t remember whether the film buff had said Delaine Lawson worked at a hospital, a clinic, or a nursing home. I just knew it was something medical and in Manhattan, which led me to the main library’s reference section for the first step of my mission. See, they have phone listings for every borough in New York City there. A fistful of change later, I had a Xeroxed copy of the Yellow Pages listings for all Manhattan health facilities.
So, back to me under the table, which is where I’ve been for the past hour or so, and also where I’ve been for several hours the past
couple of nights. This is step two. And I swear, as I dial each number, my fingers shake so much it’s as if I’m coming down with a sudden case of palsy. Trying to maneuver a rotary dial quietly is just about impossible, and since Mama is too cheap to get a push-button phone, I’m forced to suffer. Jerry’s not here tonight, which is shocking in itself, considering he camps out here most every night now. But that means Mama’s got no diversion, so I’m forced to be ghostly quiet. The only way to cut down on the loud clicking noise the dial makes is to keep my pointer finger in the finger hole and slowly crank the dial around and back to its resting position. Now, this isn’t too bad if a phone number has a lot of ones and twos in it—those are closest to the finger stop—but when it’s a bunch of eights, nines, and zeroes, forget it. It ends up taking forever for those numbers to make a full rotation. So here I am, going down the listing of medical establishments. But between my slow-motion dialing, being put on hold, and being transferred, it takes like ten minutes to complete each call. Anyway, I might not have mastered my dialing technique, but I have mastered my conversation:
“Such-and-such hospital/clinic/nursing home,” the person on the other end will say.
“Hi, I’m trying to reach Delaine Lawson,” I respond.
“What department, please?”
“Uh, nursing?”
“Sure, hold while I transfer.” Then there’s a pause, followed by more ringing.
“Nurses’ station.”
“Hi, I’m trying to reach Delaine Lawson.”
“Is she a patient?”
“No. A nurse.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t have a Nurse Lawson.”
“Oh, could you transfer me back to the operator, please?”
“No problem. Please hold.” Pause. Ring.
“Operator.”
“Yeah, I was calling for Delaine Lawson. I thought she was a nurse, but I guess she’s not. See, my brother took a message saying I got a call from her. This was earlier in the day, but seeing that the call came from a ______”—I fill in the blank with hospital, clinic, or nursing home—“I thought it might be important. But he didn’t write down what the call was for. Can you just check if there’s a Delaine Lawson in another department?”
Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl Page 18