“Where is Dawson when I most need him?”
She was only fifteen when she met Dawson. He was a handsome guy, going to high school, and she didn’t have finished yet the elementary. She had to give up her studies to pursue a career, which her mother, an independent single-mother, had prepared to her.
Her grandmother was ill, dying from lung cancer, and her mother needed her, now more than ever, to help her in the factory, sewing the wedding dresses to her clients, who were extremely rich women, most of them married to politicians and other authorities who worked for the government. The wedding dresses were addressed to the daughters of modern aristocracy, which by the way, she assumed that she would be wearing one of those days.
Dawson had already asked her mother for her daughter's hand. Though her father was still alive, he disappeared from their lives since
Christie was nine years old. But Christie has just a few memories from her father’s figure. His absence made her feel as if he didn’t exist at all. He seemed to be more like a character of a poorly written novel in the mist of her own life than a dream that she had one day and she could not remember so well.
Her stepfather’s disappearance coincided with her debut in a romantic relationship with herself, when she dreamed of a Prince Charming, culminating with the appearance of her best friend into her life. Art seemed to be the best guy to whom she could devote herself and she felt she could spend the rest of her life with him without hesitation or second thoughts. The problem was only that she also felt that she could have never met a guy like this in her life. And perhaps her perception was also right: A Cassandra's prediction that could ruin her entire dream of wedding him one day. Besides, he had too many troubles in his life to really pay attention to his friend’s deepest feelings. Since she was a little girl, he kept being a major influence in her life. And although distant, he was still there for her, as he pictured himself on her eyes.
To explore her own soul there was not one person who could take care of her feelings better than her mother. Who knew her better than anyone else in this world?
Her mother was sweet and funny, and the “best mom” to translate into her own words.
Christie, as her own mother used to call her since she was born, attended the church every Sunday and prayed for her grandmother’s soul.
But Art was her heart. He was the sweetheart to whom she would wed, and for him she would devote her life. She assumed she would marry him some day, as a passionate dream for which only a mature woman could wish. But she was still a girl; she didn’t have the breakthrough that emphasizes the ability to make him being struck by her natural charm and her powerful talents.
Natural charm was her deed indeed. She was full of grace. Her walk was followed by a dance of a million stars. The sidewalk had a brilliant glimpse and no path would ever be the same again, after she passed over it.
She liked to laugh, and a lot. She seemed to be full of surprises, and her life was indeed an adventure in each corner of the risky highways that seemed to accompany her. Her personality was a mixture of passion and shimmering disdain. She could go from the angel who fell from the stars, with all her sympathy and respect, such a distinctive lady, to a nasty beast, or rather bitch who could devour a hundred wolves.
Her curled dark hair and her golden greenish eyes astonished the most glorious people used to deal with celebrities and neck breaking personalities in a daily basis. Was she an emerald hidden between rocks or the petals of an orchard in the middle of a bouquet of roses? She seemed to be blessed and her sincere nature surprised the most enlightened person. But what mostly impressed people by her beauty it was the intense light that was projected from her eyes.
Although her life was drifted by so many bad surprises, she seemed to surpass them with a graciousness that only an angel would encompass, as if she could fly away with white wings and a smile, and to all the right places.
Her skin was dark, yet it could even be considered very tanned by the sun, as she spent most of her time going to the beach and bathing on the ocean. And yet she almost never used to take a sunbath for the last few years after her friend died, and she felt so depressed that she did not go to the beach ever again.
In spite of it all her eyes had even more brightness by the contrast of her dark skin. Her father was French. Her mother was the most beautiful woman to whom he ever laid on his eyes. And she was born from a family who were slaves, and from a couple who got to being born free, being her grandfather a hard worker from the beginning of the century, who helped to build the highest buildings in New York City. His parents came from Africa, and the parents of his parents were slaves.
She looked so different from her mother that only her skin could explain that she came from an Afro-American family. At school, children would ask her if her mother had blue eyes, for her eyes being green, they wondered if any of her parents had blue or green eyes, and if her father had brown eyes, and her mother blue.
“My mother is an African-American woman, and I am too”, she would proudly say. “And I have my mother’s skin, and I came from her womb! I´ve got no father. I am born from a virgin mother...” she would answer to anyone who questioned her origins.
She would always state with every certainty in her bones that her mother was a virgin when she conceived little baby Christie, which was not totally incorrect. There held indeed some hidden truth on that. A mystery that maybe she was about to reveal. The guy who she met didn't know her deeply and didn’t exactly succeed on his perpetrating intention.
He was afraid that someone would appear in the building where her mother worked as a sewer, and he did it before he could even reach her deeply.
He made her promise that she would shut up and do not tell anyone about what happened, to the risk of losing her job for she couldn’t report a rape (he did have some letters from her saying that she loved him, enough evidence to get him rid of any judgment.) But she could put him on jail for sexual harassment. He was her boss after all.
So the very next day she called the police and made a complaint against him. He was put in jail for his sexual assault and this was but a heavy burden that he had imposed on her. And her daughter never wanted to meet “that bastard”: that is how she called her own father.
Her mother worked hard to give her child the best that she could possibly provide for both of them. Her big brother was already in the run to a scholarship at Law Studies and he would soon be prepared to work as a lawyer. Jay was the best half-brother she could ever wish for. Although their differences were immense, with a gap from age to life style, there was a bridge that made the harmony for both of them as easily as happily as they could dare to encounter even between twin flames: both had a mother full of love for them and a smile full of sympathy and hopes.
Although her mother didn’t give birth to her half-brother, she did treat him as if he came from her womb.
But they were the best violet purple love only soul mates could offer. Her half brother was generous to her, and now she lived in his apartment into an old building at the corner of Trenton Ave and York Street, in an obscure area of Philadelphia City.
He had been using the apartment that he bought five years ago, as an office for his law business affairs. But now he moved to New York, where he had many clients and he decided to close the apartment.
Christie wanted to use his apartment to give a big change in her life. She was tired of working at the factory with her mother and she decided that she wanted some independence. She was already nineteen and she thought that the accuracy of her life would support a life on her own.
Her mother was not at all satisfied with her “own made up mind” decision. After all “It's a big world out there...” as she told her daughter.
But then, what could she do with a girl so stubborn like that? She left her mother all preoccupied at her house in the Northwest of Washington DC.
..................................................................
The next day, aft
er she had moved from New York, the City that never sleeps, to D.C., THE City, and then back to Philadelphia, she goes to the shopping mall next to Juniper Street. The mall was empty since the September eleven attack. She came inside the Gap Store. There she bought a nice sweater that she had been enamored with for months, and a coat made of wool. She was about to meet a friend, Stephanie, also known as Fanny, which is the diminutive of Francis. And that is how she liked to be called. If she wanted to see a smile from her, she just had to treat her like a French royalty and call her Fanny. If she wanted to see her cracking out loud she would say her first name and her second with such a redundant result that would make the word “funny” sound silly to her, making it a funny world, after all.
Her sincerity and ability to make a fool of herself had her often taken as a clown between friends. And yet nothing could come further from the origin. Her royalty was expressed in each studied movement that she would make. Her name was given after Stephanie, the Princess from Monaco. Her own mother met the Princess of Monaco's mother, Grace Kelly, when she was still working as an actress in a studio in LA.
She was a former prodigious child star by then, but her career was over when her parents decided that it was time to move back to Paris, to an after-war France, for all the doors were open back then to return home. Since then, between tears of farewell, she promised her oldest fellow star, and companion of the same cinema's company, that she would give her child the same name as the actress. So she had four daughters; the oldest one was Grace, the second one, Kelly; then she came: Caroline. And her youngest daughter is Cristie's dear friend Stephanie Francis.
Her cousin, whose family stayed in America, just got married. And she knows that the best wedding dresses would come from her mother’s hands. Besides, she was a major in fashion. So she was really used to understand the term “hot stuff” when it comes to the high fashion.
And she also knows where the name “haute couture” came from.
Once a man let her pass first on the bridge near her house. She hesitated, she didn't want to feel like she was a feminist, but she saw that he came first. She then noticed that he was just being a gentleman. But after a while the man got angry.
“They will do it on purpose... there are no more ladies in this world!” Another man, who had just seen the whole picture, would report to him that Stephanie was only playing a fool of him.
“Yeah, I can see that!” said the man, looking at the pretty doll who wore her hair in a French braid. Stephanie, a name which is also French, was French and, besides, Parisian and she was more than a lady. She felt herself like a Princess. But she was indeed a Goddess, with her cinematographic looks, with a face of an angel along with her sweet smile and her body to die for, and with her fashion that pretty much stayed a bit of obsessed with vintage clothes like in the forties. No, she was not in her forties, for she was even younger than Christie, although with her style she indeed looked much older. And she dressed like the movie star Laurel Bacall, someone she had been obsessed with since always, for her mother also knew that celebrity in person and had photos and posters of her in every corner of her house.
“Pardon me!!” she said with her strong and sexy French accent. “See, I am a foreigner and I don't know the rules here. S'il vous plait, vous pouvez m'expliquer ce que je dois faire en cette question la!”
Everybody looked at her as if she was an ET. And although sometimes she looked like an ET, with that entire old fashioned look mixed up with all her so modern way of living, beneath all that carcass and appearance that she projected to the outside world, she was a very humane, tender and caring person. She was such a character that could only exist in the Hollywood scene.
She wanted to get married soon, and she contacted Christie to get some information on how to make a nice treat for her wedding.
“I am so happy for her. I truly am. She met the right guy for her, and that makes her happy. And what makes my dearest sweet friend happy makes me happy too.” Christie told to her mother. So there they met, at the shopping mall. From there they went to a Starbucks nearby.
“Christie, I was thinking....”
“No, really funny! Tell me, Fanny: you were thinking...”
“Yeah” she giggled, “What if I decide to marry in red? You know, despite the other’s judgments. I want to look good... look good, you know!’
Christie could not pay attention to what she was saying after she used the word red. Red was her face then, and red was her passion for Art. Her heart was red and the color red seemed to follow her like a bloody trail. She could not take that girl's face out of her mind. Her head was full of a sanguinary tragedy, such an unpleasant memory that kept following her since she heard the news.
“What is going on, sweetie? You look pale...”
“I am sorry, Stephanie Fanny.” She thought that perhaps her dearest of friends could help lift up her spirits. But even saying her name was sounding quite awkward then.
“I do not feel well lately. You may try to get an appointment with mommy. You just have to call her and explain to her what you want. I am not the best person you could get advices from today, darling. I need to go home now. I am sorry.”
“Need a drive?”
“No, but thanks, anyway, dear. I can walk.”
“Ok, so just keep walking...” And she laughed before she left for she knew that her last phrase was referring to the tale she had just confined to her about the incidental piece of work that was her former boyfriend Johnnie.
Then, I leave quickly. I go back to my brother’s apartment and I get a message from the answer machine. The officer called me twice. He really needs to talk about the girl. Oh, man! What now? Do I really need to explain to them, again, and again, that I do not know that girl?
She takes a nap. During her sleep she hears a bell ringing again, with that celestial timber, as if a thousand angels touched it, as if announcing the end of a dreadful time and the return of the dead to their places. She wakes up, and looks at the watch before her: six o’clock; again, at the same time that she has been awakening each morning.
“Mom, how could you do that?? Not telling me about that? Keeping me away from the truth... Without thinking that one day I would finally find out about what happened that dreadful night where I was conceived?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. The detective found much more out about her past than she could possibly know. She was not born from a “bastard” father as her mother had insinuating most of her life. In fact she wanted to have a baby with him and disappeared to the south in a faraway land of Brazil when she found out that she was pregnant. And it was there where she was born.
The man was not even convicted because the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Later on, her mother came back to the States when she was only six years old. But Christie still remembered her childhood in Brazil like a treasure, or more like a dream.
“And you never told me that...Why? I always hated myself for being the product of a violent crime.”
“I am so sorry, honey. It was the “mid-eighties”. And women were so much for their liberation, to work hard and be independent, and to never allow a man to dictate them that it was more like a fashion to follow to be a single mother and take care of your own child.”
“But then, all that you said about me not having a father it was all a lie to me... How could you do that to your own daughter?” Christie started to cry.
“Don’t cry, sugar baby... I always wanted you all mine, and I couldn’t conceive a man’s figure in my life at that time. My father abused me when I was only two. And I hated men so much... And I was so afraid that this could happen again to my own child...”
She also starts to cry on the other line. She never thought that one day this would all go out, so easily like that, pouring directly from her soul to her eternal child. At least, that is what she supposed that she was doing. Because what she heard from the other side was a different cry. Christie had never heard her mother sigh so profoun
dly like that.
“What about me? Didn’t you ever think that I would want to meet my own father someday?”
“But you hate the guts out of him...”
“Of course, mother! Who wouldn’t? After all, telling such a story to a young innocent being?”
Meanwhile, Christie had the refrigerator open, as she was hungry for more information.
“Listen, Christie, little sugar! I do not want you to look for your father. I once was very much in love with him. And when I found out that he was cheating on me, and that I would have this child of mine. I realized it was too much to bear... Besides, he would turn just like your old grandpa, anyway! I know the type, believe me!”
“But I do have a father. And now I want to know him.”
She doesn’t respond.
Christie could not take this anymore. She hung up, after she saw a sweet apple pie looking at her and inviting her so voluptuously to insert her teeth on that red slice.
“Come, and eat me!” The pie would say.
She turned on the TV as she lied down over her bed. Too many lies and too many flies orbiting around, that even she was not certain to whom she would confine and what to believe anymore. And yet she could not quite grasp what was going on.
And she cannot stop the TV remote control, as it seems that she cannot even control her own life now.
She goes from one channel to another, to go channel surfing, making a rapper of a zapper, zapping like a zombie, without paying attention to no channel in particular. They all seem so filled with ads anyway. She feels herself being swallowed by a giant wave, from the aggressiveness of tasteless and endless TV commercials, between senseless images and nonsensical (and not at all lyrical) jingles.
A dog that bites its owner... and there was another dog who talks. And now came two cats complaining with another lazy cat, about their smelly ‘pots’. What about the cats singing a chorus: what are they really selling, by the way? Was that Cats, the amusing musical on TV??
There it comes another senseless one: it was about a boy who, having a hard time cleaning his greasy hands, throws away sweaty and bloody-tomato sauce filled with the hamburger that can kill you from high cholesterol. Then it comes another ad (that adds nothing else, but pure tasteless images) of that jelly that you better spill it out, or you will get diabetes just by watching it. She leaves the CNN channel on, live while she's still alive.
Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe Page 7