I Am Not Sidney Poitier (17 page)

Thanksgiving came around, and Maggie haltingly invited me to DC to meet her parents.

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t it a little soon? You seem a little nervous.”

“You’re nervous,” she said.

“I’m scared to death. Aren’t you a tiny bit nervous?”

She nodded. “My family is slightly class conscious,” she said. “A lot class conscious. Hell, they’re snobs.”

“I see.”

“They expect me to be with someone whom they consider to have a pedigree. It’s not enough for them that he be a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO, his parents have to be as well.”

“I see. I have no parents.”

“Oh, but Not Sidney, I don’t think like that. Honestly, I don’t know how they’ll be. I just want you to be aware that they might, I emphasize
might,
try to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Then why should I go?” I asked.

“Because I want you to.”

That, I found to be the most interesting and persuasive argument she could have offered.

That night Maggie and I had awkward but sweet and finally probably unsatisfying sex, but we held each other afterward, feeling closer than we’d felt before we’d started. I considered that a very good thing and found myself more relaxed, all the more for the absence of oral sex; even then the thought of it conjured disturbing recall of Beatrice Hancock’s incisors and canines. We lay there, her head was on my chest, a campus lamp was burning outside her second-floor dorm room. There were voices in the hall, Friday-night joking and chortling. I felt suddenly a part of the college world, and then I laughed at myself, knowing how untrue that was.

The phone rang, and Maggie turned over to answer it. “Oh, hi.” She pulled the sheet to her chest. “It’s late. I know. I’ll be in DC for Thanksgiving. You too? I guess I’ll see you then. I can’t talk now. It’s late.” She hung up the phone.

I didn’t ask any questions, just let her head fall back onto my chest. I breathed in the fragrance of her hair.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

I said nothing.

“That was Robert. He’s like my brother. We used to go out.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at Dartmouth.” She dragged her nails along my shoulder. “He’ll be in DC over break. You’ll get to meet him.”

“That’ll be nice.”

In a fine example of returning to the well, Gladys Feet called and arranged a lunch with me downtown. She didn’t look the part of the corporate porn star that day, but a regular porn star. She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and high heels, and if not for the absence of knee socks and her being black instead of white, she could have been Beatrice Hancock. At least I felt the same vibe. We sat not far from the bar in a hotel restaurant.

“How are classes, Mr. Poitier?”

“How much do you need and what for?” I asked.

“No foreplay or anything?”

I have to admit that her sexually charged attempt at a joke gave me pause, and as I paused I imagined that that was the desired effect. She wasn’t trying to put me at ease with a bit of humor, but to put me on notice, to cast up a flare, to warn me that there was a fellatio somewhere looking for me.

“Is Dudley Feet your husband?” I asked. A pail of icy cold water on her fire, I thought.

“Yes, he is.” Her eyes did not move away from mine. “Why do you ask? He’s not a good husband. He’s inattentive and he cheats. The latter I could live with. Why do you ask?”

“Feet is not a common name,” I said.

“Tell me about it. My maiden name is Birdsong.”

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

She shot me a look that for the first time let me see her as an interesting person. She then turned her attention to the menu.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not that he’s an awful man.” She was weeping now. “But my life is awful. I’m just so lonely.”

“Ms. Feet, please, don’t cry.”

“Gladys,” she said.

“Gladys. I’m sure your husband loves you.”

“Who gives a fuck whether that little-footed monkey loves me or not. I’m not thinking about him. I’m thinking about me. I have needs.”

Her voice carried. I looked around to find a few pairs of eyes on us. As was my custom, I was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I said, again, like the imbecile I was. “I’m sure everything will be okay.”

“Oh, what do you know? You’re just a boy.”

“I’m not quite a boy,” I said, feeling oddly defensive. She was probably correct, but I bristled.

“Just because you’re rich doesn’t give you license to speak.”

“That’s true.”

“Just because you’re extremely handsome and look like Sidney Poitier, who most women would pay good money to sleep with, doesn’t give you the right to say anything.”

“That’s true, I guess.”

“You are very handsome,” she said, her tone shifting.

I looked around for our waiter.

“I apologize about this. I’m sure you’re every bit a man.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s only that when I’m around you, I have these … these feelings. I feel all tingly on my arms and thighs. Do you know what I mean?” Her voice was low now; one might say sultry, one might say crazy. If cigarettes had been allowed inside and if she had had one, she would have lit it. “Do you like older women? I mean, women my age? Not old, but older than you?”

“I suppose. My mother was an older woman and I liked her.”

“No, I mean, are you attracted to older women?”

“You’re very … ” I stopped, thinking that I might have flattered myself into a corner or worse. “Can you just tell me how much money the college needs?” I was sweating. My shirt felt sticky.

“What about my needs?”

“All I have is money, Ms. Feet.”

“Gladys.”

“Gladys. Really, all I have to offer is money.”

“I don’t want money.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Whereas at one point in our relationship, back when everything was about money, I had felt, if not in control then on equal footing, I was now lost, confused, in over my head.

“Would you come upstairs with me and rub my temples?” she asked.

“Upstairs?”

“I got us a room.”

I wish I could say that I said something clever, pulled back her chair, and escorted her up to the room where I left her alone at the door. I wish that I could say that I said something cool and aloof and excused myself gracefully from the table and hailed a taxi as the sky began to drizzle. But I can say neither. I knocked my chair over as I stood too quickly and sprinted suspectlike from the restaurant as if I was on fire, like a seven-year-old little boy confronted with his first kiss, like the coward I was. Gladys Feet would have to go up to her room alone and imagine me or Sidney Poitier; it apparently didn’t matter which.

“And here I was going to invite you over to my place for Thanksgiving,” Everett said.

“Really?”

“No.”

We were sitting in the student center. He picked at a muffin.

“I’m sure you’ll have a fine and memorable time in Washington. Young Ms. Larkin seems very nice. I think she’s quite bright, though I’m not a good judge of such things.”

“Her old boyfriend will be there,” I said.

“He has to be someplace. Why does that make you nervous? He’s the old boyfriend.”

“What if she still has feelings for him?”

“Better to find out sooner than later.”

Of course he was correct, but I was finding little comfort in that fact. “It’s just that I like her so much.”

“You’re rapidly becoming a boring fellow,” Everett said. “Have you had sex with her?”

“I believe that’s my business.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I really don’t think we should be talking about this,” I said. I looked out the window.

“Okay, okay, relax. Don’t get your no-doubt-patterned bloomers in a clove hitch.”

I drummed my fingers on my thigh, upset that I was not relaxed, but said, “I’m relaxed.”

“What about her parents? Are you nervous about meeting them?”

“Extremely.”

“Well, don’t tell that you’ve seen their baby naked. That’s my best piece of advice.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“And be yourself.”

“Who else would I be?”

“I don’t know. You might decide all of a sudden that you’re Sidney Poitier. You’re not, you know. Though you do look alarmingly like him. Tell me, whom do I look like?”

I looked over his facial features. His sad but alert brown eyes were too close to his face. His lips were strangely thin. His large nose looked like it had been broken several times. I could think of no one he resembled. “I don’t know many actors,” I finally said.

“What about Roscoe Lee Browne?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Come on, you know Roscoe Lee Browne. He was all over the television. Maybe he still is. He was in
The Cowboys
with John Wayne. I don’t much like John Wayne, but Roscoe Lee Browne was great. Anyway, you’d know him if you saw him,” he said. “I know you would. What about Bill Cosby?”

“You look nothing like Bill Cosby,” I said.

“Thank the lord,” Everett said, “if only there were such a thing. But seriously, you have to know that you look more like Sidney Poitier than Sidney Poitier ever did. Have you ever seen
In the Heat
of the Night
?”

“No.”

“A beautiful love story, that movie. Let me hear you say, ‘They call me Mr. Tibbs.’ ”

“They call me Mr. Tibbs,” I said.

“No, say it as if a crab is biting your ass, as if someone is peeling an unpleasant and undesired memory from your core, as if you’re feeling a little bitchy, as if you might be gay but even you don’t know.”

I said it again.

“Uncanny. You ever do drugs?”

I shook my head.

“Huh. That’s too bad, but hardly surprising.” He stood, looked out the window at a Spelman girl in a short skirt and then down at me. “Enjoy your break. And remember, be yourself. Unless you can think of someone better.”

Maggie and I could not manage seats together on the flight to Washington, and so I sat in 23B watching her head bob and turn in apparent bemusement and laughter with her neighbor in the nineteenth row, a guy who might have been an upperclassman at Morehouse, but I never found out. I couldn’t even find an escape in a nap on the relatively short flight because of the constant washroom trips of the woman in the window seat. About the fourth of five times she offered an apology in the form of a quick explanation by whispering, “UTI.” I didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded awful and I found complete and sudden compassion for her, even though she would not trade seats with me because she didn’t want to give up the window. And so I was in a bad mood when we landed at National Airport, though, as was my wont, I did not let on to Maggie. One might ask then what was the point of the bad mood, and I can only answer, the satisfaction of personal suffering.

The cab driver kept craning to glance back at me in his mirror. “I know you,” he said. “Are you from Nigeria?”

“No.”

“I know you. You look like that Sidney Poitier.”

“I hear that. Thank you.”

“You are not him, are you?”

“I’m not him, no.”

“Where are you from? You look Nigerian.”

“I’m from Los Angeles,” I said. Somehow that didn’t feel true. “That’s where I was born.”

From the taxi window Maggie pointed from the 14th Street Bridge out over the Potomac. “Do you know anything about boating?”

“I’ve sailed,” I said.

“Daddy will like that,” she said.

The house was large, a midsixties’ split-level with a three-car garage and an expanse of lawn that seemed somewhat ridiculous. The taxi left us out in the holly-hedge-lined driveway. I carried my bag and the heavier of Maggie’s two as I followed her past the beige Cadillac to a side porch where she unlocked the door. We stepped into an anteroom, what might have been called a mudroom in a farmhouse. It was a room that might have been bright and cheery if not for the heavy red drapes covering the windows on either side of the door. From that room I could see into the kitchen and beyond that into what I would learn later was the breakfast room. The walls were painted red, the tiled floor of the kitchen was red and white, the refrigerator and stove were red.

“My mother loves red,” Maggie said, almost as an apology. “So, this is it. Where I grew up.”

“Wow,” I said, not a big
wow,
but a polite one.

“Who is that in there?” a woman called from another room. “Could it be? Could it be? Is that my Maggie? My shaggy Maggie?” A woman in her midsixties came around the corner and hugged Maggie, then stepped back. “Lord, look at you, miss college girl. Still pretty. But don’t they feed you children down there?”

“Oh, Violet.”

“Don’t tell me. You lost weight.”

“Violet,” Maggie said. “This is Not Sidney.”

I put my hand out to shake, but it was left hanging there. “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Not Sidney goes to Morehouse.”

“Hmmm,” she said.

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“I see,” Violet said. “You have family here in Washington?”

“No, I don’t”

“Not Sidney will be staying with us,” Maggie said.

“I’ll make up the guest room, I suppose. And see if I can get another steak from the butcher.” She muttered to herself as she walked off. “Nobody tells me a damn thing around here. Guest.”

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Violet,” Maggie said.

“I got that much.”

“She’s been with us forever. She lives in the apartment downstairs.”

“Is she a relative?” I asked.

“No. She’s like family. She takes care of things. She cooks and cleans, stuff like that. She took care of my sister and me when we were little.”

“She’s the housekeeper,” I said. The word servant seemed more correct but less appropriate.

“No, she’s Violet.”

“She seems nice,” I lied. “She didn’t seem to know I was coming. Seemed kind of upset about it.”

“I guess I forgot to mention it.”

“Do your parents know I’m here?”

“Must have slipped my mind to tell them. But they won’t care. They’re going to be thrilled to meet you. They’re going to love you. Come on, let me show you the rest of the house.”

We left our bags in the foyer, and Maggie led me through the crimson-carpeted downstairs. The expanse of red was, if not disorienting, unsettling, and I found it difficult to take a step without staring down at it. In the dining room was a long, elaborately ornate table with an enormous arrangement of impossibly colored silk flowers in its center. The room was dark; the large windows were covered by Venetian blinds, which, though open, could only let in so much light past the white curtains and the red drapes, which were belted by gold cords. At the center of the coffee table that was as wide as the gold sofa was a collection of variously sized blown-glass swans filled with red-colored water.

“Like I said, my mother loves red.”

I nodded. “Well, she certainly doesn’t seem to be shy about liking it,” I said. The quality of the silence that followed made think I’d been a bit disrespectful, and so I added, “Shows strength.”

“That’s where the Christmas tree will go,” Maggie said, pointing at the corner near the fireplace.

“What does your mother do?” I asked.

“She heads a conservative think tank.”

Maggie might as well have said it in Russian for all the words meant to me. I didn’t say
what?
but I thought it and I’m sure it showed on my face.

“My mother testifies before Congress and goes on television all the time talking about conservative issues. She’s trying to get rid of the welfare system because it keeps black people down and to stop gay rights because it endangers the family structure and keeps black people down and to abolish affirmative action because it teaches special preference and that keeps black people down. That sort of stuff.”

I nodded.

“You’ll love her,” Maggie said without a lot of conviction.

“I’m sure I will.”

Maggie showed me up the spiral staircase to my room at the end of the hall, so I could get cleaned up and, as she put it, rest for a spell. The upstairs was considerably less red than the downstairs, but no less troubled by many knickknacks, figurines, snow globes, shot glasses, and small bells. The bells gave me a shudder as I recalled my experience with Beatrice Hancock. The guest room, my quarters, was a stable to an array of stuffed animals, small and not so small, mostly bears, but also two lions, a pug dog, a giraffe, and what I took to be a lemur.

I sat on the bed and felt suddenly like I ought not. The spread was gold in color, stiff and shiny, smooth as if it had never been touched. I stood and stepped away. I went into the bathroom and looked at the many-colored soaps on the sill of the sink. There was a shower, but no tub. Violet had put a stack of clean towels and a cloth on top of the hamper by the door. The was a knock on the door, and I stepped back into the bedroom to find Maggie entering.

“How is everything?”

“Great. It’s a very nice room.”

“You’re comfortable?”

I nodded, picked up the stuffed pug. “Your mother’s?”

“All over the house. She grew up dirt poor and never had a doll or a stuffed animal and now she says she’s making up for it.”

“What about you? Did you have a favorite stuffed animal when you were little?” I set the dog back down unto the bed.

“A bear,” she laughed. “Named Teddy. Pretty boring, huh?”

“I don’t know. Apparently a lot of people named their bears that.”

“What about you?” she asked. “Any animals?”

“Not that I can recall. For some reason I don’t think my mother would have approved.”

Maggie sat on the bed and I sat next to her. “What was she like? Your mother, what was she like?”

“Intense,” I said. “Smart, I believe. I’m pretty sure she was smart. Intense, certainly.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Eleven.”

“And that’s when you moved to Atlanta? You told me you went to live with an uncle.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“I heard a rumor that you lived with Ted Turner.”

“That’s crazy.” I felt bad for lying to her and I in fact had no idea why I was. It felt especially bad to be lying when she had so plainly articulated what was true. “No, I lived with an uncle, my mother’s younger brother. He died last year.”

“Oh, I see.”

I heard voices out of the room and then footfalls on the stairs. “Is that my baby up there?” a woman said. “My baby come from college?”

“We’re in here, Mommy,” Maggie said.

“And not alone, I understand, not alone,” Maggie’s mother said as she turned into the bedroom. She was a tall woman with no shoulders, and though her clothes were not made of metal, it seemed to me she was wrapped in foil. She glittered, but maybe not in a good way. She was wrapped in gold necklaces and bangles. Surprisingly, however, she wore no red.

I stood and glanced back to see if I had rumpled the bedcover. It seemed I hadn’t, but still I smoothed it.

“Mommy, this is Not Sidney.”

My name, as it did with so many, gave her pause, and I could see the thought bubble over her head,
Then what is his name?

“Not Sidney,” I repeated. I reached out and shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Not Sidney,” she said.

“Not Sidney,” Maggie said, “this is my mother, Ruby Larkin.”

“Ms. Larkin.” I let her hand go and it hung there in space.

“Not Sidney goes to Morehouse.”

“Not Sidney,” Ruby Larkin said. She cocked her head to the side and regarded me. “That’s a very interesting name.”

I nodded. “My mother was eccentric.”

“Was?”

“Not Sidney’s mother died when he was eleven,” Maggie told her.

Ruby Larkin looked blankly at me for a second, then said to Maggie, “Well, you two get situated. Daddy will be home in an hour or so.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

Mother kissed daughter’s cheek. To me, she said, “Not Sidney,” turned, and left us alone. To get situated.

Maggie informed me that we would be grabbing a bite out, eating light, and saving ourselves for the coming
feast,
as she called it, of the next day. I didn’t remember Thanksgivings with my mother. I did remember that she found the day somewhat ridiculous as she railed on about how the soon-to-be-removed Indians were actually saving the starving and stupid Pilgrims and not having some warm and fuzzy picnic. The truth lay somewhere in the middle of those two depictions, I was sure, and though her reaction had not left me with bad feelings about the holiday, I found it difficult to generate a lot of enthusiasm.

Maggie left me so that I could get ready to go out, though I didn’t know what getting ready really entailed. I showered, standing with raised goose bumps under a nearly icy spray as I’d grown tired of waiting for the water to heat up. I put on fresh clothes, but after seeing the attire of Maggie and now her mother, I thought, as I buttoned and zipped, that my clothes were more clean than fresh. Then, as I sat on the ladderback chair near the window I discovered that one could hear conversations quite well through the listening device that was the heating vent. Mr. Larkin was no doubt home, and Ruby had a few words to say about me, beginning with:

“He’s just so dark, Ward.”

“Well, how dark is he?” Ward Larkin asked.

“Black.”

It hadn’t occurred to me, but now it did that the Larkins were all very light in complexion. It hadn’t dawned on me that I should have noticed or cared. More fool me, I guess.

“Well, what’s his name?” Ward asked.

“That’s the other thing,” Ruby said. “His name is Not Sidney.”

“Then what is it?”

“That’s it. Not Sidney. The word
not
and Sidney.”

“Hmmph. Some kind of ghetto nonsense, no doubt.”

“I don’t like him. He acts all nice. But you know what nice and a nickel will get you.”

“Nothing costs a nickel anymore,” Ward said.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll check him out. What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know,” Ruby said.

“I’ll get it from Maggie.”

“Are they eating here tonight?” Ward asked.

“No, they’re going out. I’ll go let Maggie know you’re home.” I could hear Ruby less clearly now as she, I assume, was leaving the room. “Ward, it’s just that he’s so dark.”

I pulled my white socks over my black feet and laced up my sneakers. Maggie came in and observed the expression on my face, an expression that though I’m certain I cannot describe, must have conveyed a bit of terror, some disgust, and a dash of get-me-the-hell-out-of-here.

“Daddy’s home. Ready to meet him?”

“You bet.”

Maggie led me down to the red-carpeted first floor, through the living room, and to a set of double doors. The doors were dark wood and ominous enough looking, but then she asked again, “Are you ready?”

I wondered now if I was ready, and I don’t recall responding at all when she pushed open both doors. She pulled me into the room that was paneled with dark hardwood like the door and was washed in yellow lamplight. The severed heads of once-large animals covered the walls. There was an actual bearskin rug, the head of which nearly tripped me as I stepped fully inside. Leaning on the edge of his oak desk with the window and late afternoon light behind him, Ward Larkin cut a distinctly unimpressive figure.