40
Today was the day that the Janet Jackson music video was going to be taped. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t go. It didn’t matter that she wouldn’t be on MTV after all. After everything that had happened, she just didn’t care anymore.
Feeling lost and detached, Barbey watched Mama and her father standing over her grandfather’s grave as the coffin was lowered into the ground. He had died of heart failure. The trees’ leaves were blowing in the cool wind against the white sky, their trunks leaning over just slightly to one side as if they were looking into the hundreds of graves scattered about, pushing the towering crosses deeper into the corpses’ hearts.
Mama pulled her black shawl closer to her, her long black dress blowing with the wind and then wiped her eyes and nose with a handkerchief and looked over at Barbey who was scowling at the setting. Mama’s pink pouty lips spread into a phony smile which irritated Barbey. She hated her falseness, though she knew her expression was an odd attempt at consolation. Then Mama glanced around at the other mourners that included a few old men and women who were friends of her grandfather. To Barbey, those old people seemed frightened as if being at a cemetery made them more aware of their approaching deaths.
A month had passed since Barbey’s brother, David, had joined the army and had been stationed in Germany. His leaving made her feel abandoned. It seemed to her that he had no desire to have a close relationship with her and that she also should try to detach herself from him emotionally as he proved to never be available to her. She had come to the realization that though she loved him and found him to be a pleasure to be around he had never seemed very interested in her in a true way.
With the succession of disheartening events that had occurred in Barbey’s life recently, she began to yearn more than ever before for a close family relationship. She had always wanted closeness with her father, Mama, and her brother, but it seemed that they had always been uninterested and more concerned with their own pleasures, sufferings, and endeavors to devote any real time to developing a bond with her. But, now, after discovering that her father and Mama had kept the truth of her birth mother from her, she despised them and wanted to hurt them more than she wanted to be close with them. At this moment, she decided somehow, someway she would find her birth mother’s parents and reunite with them. Maybe with them she would find the loving, close family she yearned for.
An odd impulse came to Barbey as quickly and fiercely as she perceived death must have struck her grandfather on that night when she found him dead on the floor, and so she fumbled through her purse for her camera in a panic as if she were searching for heart medication. When she retrieved it, she aimed the lens at her father who was staring coldly, fixedly at the coffin just as he had been during the entire time since he had approached the grave. She snapped a photo. He did not look up and she did not glance around to see if anyone had noticed. She knew it was entirely inappropriate to take a picture at a funeral, but she felt desperately compelled and hoped that at a later time when she looked at this picture she might mourn appropriately for her grandfather because now she also felt coldly detached from the entire experience.
Barbey knew she should feel sad—she loved her grandfather—but the succession of disheartening events had filled her with such an overwhelming feeling of sadness, anger and confusion that she felt that if she allowed herself to cry she would wail so loudly and uncontrollably that she may never be able to stop; consequently, it was easier to fill her mind with thoughts of hate, especially toward Mama and her father.
When Barbey got into the back seat of her parent’s Mercedes Benz, her mind heightened with a greater succession of swarming dark and ugly thoughts. Her father sat at the steering wheel staring straight ahead for a moment before he started the car. The diesel engine rattled along with Mama’s chattering voice. She was rambling on about whether she should cancel her square dancing party she was throwing next week at the house because, as she put it, “We are in a state of mournin’.” Barbey’s father just grunted in response and drove on toward home.
As her mind sizzled with sharp hurtful thoughts, Barbey glared out of the window at the business district flashing by, cluttered with billboards of beautiful women with glossy smiles advertising toothpaste or adult theater. Maybe it was an inappropriate time to bring up the subject, but again she could not control herself. “Dad,” she looked at the side of his face as he appeared in his own world. “Can you give me my mother’s parent’s address?” she spoke in as calm of a voice as she could muster. “I want to meet them.”
Her father simply stared at the road straight ahead and did not respond.
“Honey,” Mama interjected, “We lost contact with Shira’s parents a long time ago…”
“They’re dead,” her father interjected.
Mama appeared startled. “The whole situation with ’em was an ugly mess and we’re all better off livin’ separate lives. What’s past is past and we should leave it that way.”
“They’re dead?” Barbey asked, her voice slightly quivering.
“Yes,” her father responded adamantly. “They passed last year a month apart from each other, so let it alone.”
Barbey was silent.
The Mercedes had turned onto their street, a twelve mile road, a rural setting of sparsely dispersed houses, trees and mountains.
“I just want to know why…” Barbey’s voice was high-pitched and accusatory, “…you didn’t give me and David the opportunity to have a relationship with my birth mother’s parents? That was really selfish of you both to keep us away from them.”
“Honey, it’s a lot more complicated than that,” Mama responded. “It was really not your grandfather’s place to tell you about Shira, but God rest his soul, he was apparently not in sane mind.”
“He was sane alright—he just had a heart attack because Dad flipped out on him for telling me the truth about how he murdered my mother by pulling her feeding tube and making her starve and dehydrate to death. Do you know how horrendously she must have suffered being deprived of water and food for thirteen days, becoming so shriveled and dry until her body gave out entirely? Can you imagine your own tongue hard as a rock in your mouth, bleeding, and dry from dehydration? And no one around you will save you! It must have been a torturous death! And you call that love and mercy? You are sick people!”
“Enough!” Her father yelled out. “Enough already! You just keep your mouth shut already, young lady! I won’t have you disgracing Shira like that. You weren’t there, so just let it alone.”
Mama reached over to comfort him, but he pulled away like a skittish dog.
Then the sounds in the car were silent except for the engine that rattled on.
41
Barbey lay on her bed in the middle of a cold February day, gazing up at the white canopy that her grandmother had given her. Her bedroom windows were open and the cold winds were blowing against the canopy, causing it to flutter against the chilly air. Mama had always said the canopy was a gift from her grandmother who left it when she passed away. Barbey had assumed it was from Mama’s mother who passed away before she was born, but recently she had learned from Mama that it had been left to her from her birth mother’s mother. The canopy seemed to be rolling in gentle waves now which made Barbey feel as if she were out at sea gazing up at a white cold sky that covered and rolled with the ocean in a great smothering fog.
She replayed Mama’s explanation of receiving the canopy in her mind: “At the funeral,” Mama said, “after lowerin’ Shira’s casket into the ground, Shira’s mama tried to hand this here canopy to your daddy. I remember she was so sad she almost whispered when she spoke which was unusual for her, as she was a talkative woman. She said, ‘Give this to Barbey,’ her voice was serene and faraway like she was lookin’ into a heavenly cloud that only she could see. ‘Barbey too can marry under it. This is the chupa that Shira’s father and I were married under.’ She kept pushing the folded sheet at him, but he refused it. ‘Take
it,’ she said under her breath as she set it down on the ground right there next to the grave and just walked away with her head down and all. I nearly cried—I felt so sorry for her losin’ her own daughter. It’s not natural to lose a daughter while you’re still kickin’. After your daddy went to the car, I picked it up off the ground and put it in my shoulder bag. Then when you were old enough to sleep in a bed, I sewed it into a canopy and gave it to you. I thought you should have somethin’ from your roots.”
Lost in a sea of obsession, Barbey estimated that it had been almost a half of a year since Rave had vanished from her world. The thought rolled like a big wave into imagining herself ripping the canopy off her bedposts and tying it around her neck and then to the ceiling fixture. Everything in her life seemed over shadowed by her obsessive thoughts of Rave Robinson. It appeared as if he had used her for the purpose of winning back Suzie Alber’s love, but a part of her couldn’t believe this. She would stand on a chair while she fastened the canopy sheet to the metal post on the light fixture and then kick the chair away. Now Rave and Suzie were happily living out their lives at Barbey’s expense. She just couldn’t believe that Rave did not love her, which rolled into imagining herself choking from the noose, gasping for air. There must be some misunderstanding, she would tell herself. Maybe he left me because I never told him I love him? Maybe he felt that I didn’t return his love, so he settled for Suzie Albers because she was comfortable and predictable. She wondered how long it would take for her to die. Does strangulation really hurt this much? Most of the time she felt like the biggest fool, her mind ripping and twisting in torturous humiliation at the thought of how she had been so completely deceived. Her pride was crushed and she no longer knew who she was and then she realized she never had known who she was.
During her darkest times, she would devise fantasies on how to murder Suzie Albers so that she could have Rave back. She’d purchase a gun and some bullets on the black market, so that they wouldn’t be registered to her. Though she had no idea where the black market was, she figured she could wear a disguise and ask around in the alleys downtown. Then, at night, after the mall closed, while Suzie Albers finished cashing out her register drawer at Happy Cards and Gifts where she worked, Barbey would wait for her at her car. When she approached the car, her red long hair blowing in the wind, Barbey would come up from behind with the gun and shoot her in the back. Oh, what an evil person she had become. She hated herself almost as much as she hated Suzie Albers.
Her self-esteem had also been shattered. When she was with Rave, her ego became so enormous that it was on the verge of taking over the world in glitz and glamour like a giant movie goddess too high to touch. He had continuously stuffed her ego with compliments of her beauty, purity, and intelligence. Now that he had withdrawn his proclaimed love for her, she decided that he had discarded her because he realized that she wasn’t pure and intelligent. I don’t want to kill anyone. She knew that the issue was not her beauty because it was clear to her that she was much more beautiful than Suzie Albers with her plain round face and child-like body. Her concern was now with his perception of her purity and intelligence. Maybe Rave dumped me because I let him touch my butt when we kissed on our hike at the river, so now he thinks I’m an easy slut. Or maybe he dumped me because he thinks I’m stupid and not deep like him. She yearned for another chance to prove to him that she was intelligent and pure. If she had another chance, she would explain to him that it takes depth to choreograph the beautiful dance routines she had created over the years. She would describe the depth and high level of abstract thinking skills that went into designing her outfits, applying unique makeovers, and hairstyles. Stupid people aren’t as creative as I am. I should have shown him my talents. She smacked herself in the face.
Furthermore, she could hardly penetrate the cloud of betrayal Mama and her father had inflicted upon her by hiding her birth mother’s existence from her and her brother. How out of misguided love, though well intentioned, her father had gruesomely killed his own wife by pulling her feeding tube… How she must have suffered such a painful enduring death… How if she had only discovered the truth of her birth mother a year prior, she might have at least met her grandparents before they died…
In addition, she could hardly penetrate the cloud of gruesome acts John Prince may have performed on her while she was sedated for those twenty four hours in the motel room. If I take a blade and slash through the canopy, will I see the sky above the ocean? These betrayals, as appalling as they were in Barbey’s mind, like a thick fog that draped over her body blinding her from reality, holding her out at sea, were seemingly insignificant in comparison to the constant lightning voltage of pain she suffered from losing her life force, her soul mate, her Rave Robinson.
Barbey made several rules for herself to mask her pain. She had decided she would become as fierce as the night, cutting through her pain by draping her body in black clothing from now on. She wanted to be cunning like a Black Widow who hides patiently in the lining of a cape waiting for a victim. She wanted to be like Rave. Last week she dyed her hair black, which she now wore slicked back harshly in a low bun that frowned at her neckline. She cut long thick bangs that hanged low above her eyes because this reminded her of Rave. She powdered her face white, stopped tanning, and wore blood red lipstick, black eyeliner, and black mascara every day because this made her feel hard like ice. She would not waiver from these rules. These rules defined her.
The day following her miscarriage, she had reported John Prince to the police as Peggy Banks had encouraged. Maybe I should smash my ballerina lamp over my head instead of hanging myself. The police wrote up a report, but said there was insufficient evidence to take action. It seemed that the name “John Prince” was fictitious and because he wore disguises and changed his vocal patterns, he could not even be defined as real. She slapped herself in the face several times. The Sunrise Hotel where he supposedly had set up his photography studio had no record of him nor had they ever seen a man that fit his description. She wanted to scratch off her skin because no matter how much she bathed, she never felt clean. The River Side Motel where he had taken Barbey after she was injured, also had no record of a John Prince nor any recollection of a man who fit his description. None of the local doctors in the area had admitted to coming to the motel to tend to Barbey’s hand injury either. It also became apparent that John Prince was not a registered modeling agent as he had claimed when Barbey first met him. Life is a deception. She was too embarrassed to ask her parents if John Prince had really been an invited guest at their party as he had claimed on the night following the Janet Jackson dance competition, so she didn’t bother telling the police officers about that. She didn’t want her father to know that she had been such a fool to believe that John Prince was going to make her into a famous model. God does not exist.
Barbey felt that the police officers didn’t believe that she was raped and that she was inventing the story for attention. They suggested that maybe she was intoxicated at a party, had intercourse with someone, and had forgotten of the incident. The more she explained the story to the police officers, the less she believed as well. She finally left the department telling them that she wasn’t sure what reality was and that she figured life was an illusion anyway.
She rolled over on her side, facing the bedroom wall and stared at the photo she had taped up on the wall of a condom hanging on a stop sign. God does not exist.
42
When Barbey drove up into the driveway of her parents’ wedding cake house, she thought the sky looked dark and heavy and the trees appeared sad and droopy as if they had been crying. The mountain behind the house even appeared hunched over with its shoulders slouched and its head hanging forward in mourning. The wedding cake house seemed disoriented in this dreary setting and it reminded her that her soul mate did not love her.
She had just quit cosmetology school because Mrs. Sanders insisted that she perform a scalp massage on a man that Barbey intuitivel
y felt was perverted and only soliciting the school as a form of sexual stimulation. The procedure for scalp massages seemed improper and disgusting for a woman to perform on a man that was not her boyfriend or husband. Mrs. Sanders disagreed and said that scalp massages were a school requirement and a section on the state licensing exam. She had no choice but to either conform or quit. Consequently, she decided to quit not only because of this one incident, but also because she had lost her desire to live.
The procedure for performing a scalp massage was to tie a big cape over the client’s body, massage his neck and shoulders, and then proceed to massaging his unwashed scalp and all its natural greasy oils through the hair for a considerable amount of time. To Barbey this procedure was unsanitary and immoral. She did not think it was proper that she should have to rub down a man that she did not know in such an intimate way. Furthermore, she thought it was disgusting that she should be forced to rub her bare hands all over his oily, dirty scalp moving the oils up through his hair sensually. This seemed to her to be a form of prostitution. It seemed so obvious to her that most of the men who paid for scalp massages from young women were deriving sexual stimulation from the experience, though they acted as if it were for the sake of improving the health of their hair. When she saw this perverted looking middle aged man with shifty eyes come into the school and request her for a scalp massage, she was mortified. All she could imagine was this man rubbing his genitals underneath the cape secretively as she rubbed her hands over his body. The world is upside down, she thought. She was astounded that this procedure was considered normal and a requirement of her state licensing exam. Everybody else is doing it. Everybody else is doing it. Everybody else is doing it.
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