I Wish I Had a Red Dress (19 page)

WHEN TOMIKA CAME IN
the next morning, she was grinning like the Cheshire cat and carrying a large manila envelope, which she dropped on my desk like I’d been waiting for it.

“Open it!”

“And good morning to you,” I said.

“Good mornin’, good mornin’.” She waved at me impatiently. “Open it!”

The envelope was one of the old-fashioned kind where you wrap a string around a small round tab to close it. I unwrapped it quickly and pulled out an old copy of
Life
magazine.

“November 1, 1954,” Tee crowed. “Is she killin’ it or what?”

It was the famous cover shot with Dorothy Dandridge in full Carmen Jones regalia; hands on her hips, a sly smile, and enough sex appeal to make you squint.

“Where did you get it?” I said, unable to look away from Dorothy’s saucy stare.

“Miz Smitherman gave it to me,” Tee said breathlessly. “Can you believe it? I went by there to leave her a thank-you note and she had already pulled this out for me. She’s had it all these years and she just gave it to me.”

Tee was as excited as I’ve ever seen her. “She made me a list of all the stars that were at the dinner they went to before the show.” She dug through her purse and unfolded a piece of crinkly pink stationery filled with Lynette’s delicate handwriting. “When she started tellin’ me who all was there, I had never heard of the people she was namin’, but I could tell by the way she was sayin’ it that they musta been big stars, so I acted like I knew who she was talkin’ about.”

I laughed. “She busted you fast, didn’t she?”

Tee shook her head, embarrassed at the memory. “Fast? BAM! Faster than that! But she was cool about it. She told me not to pretend anything because it was too much work and didn’t get you anyplace but further behind.”

Lynette had a firm belief that anybody could learn anything once they quit pretending that they already knew it.

“So she wrote the names down for me. Look!” Tee smoothed out the paper and read the names out loud. “Count Basie, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diahann Carroll, Pearl Bailey and Lena Horne.” She looked up, still enjoying the feel of their names, new in her mouth. “You ever heard of ‘em?”

I nodded. “I even met Sammy Davis, Jr.”

Tee was properly impressed. “For real?”

“My father took me backstage when he was doing a show in Detroit.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. He wanted Sammy Davis to come up here and perform at his club.”

“Did he?”

“No,” I said, remembering my father’s disappointment. “But the show that night was amazing.”

She picked up the magazine again, ran her fingers gently, respectfully, across the photograph. “Bein’ that pretty didn’t protect her at all, did it?”

“No, I don’t guess it did.”

“Think she’d a done better with a .22?”

I shook my head. “No. Do you?”

She sighed. “Deena been on me and on me about how dangerous it’ll be for me to have a gun in the house while Mavis growin’ up. She got all these stats about how many little kids find a gun in they own house and blow they own brains out.” She paused for breath. “Now she tellin’ me if I do get one, she can’t let the twins come over ’cause they won’t be safe.”

“You change your mind?” I hadn’t told her about Nate’s offer yet. I figured I’d wait until they met. Maybe by then she would have changed her mind.

She shook her head, but slowly. Her braids swung, but they didn’t dance. “You know on the list where it says we should know self-defense?”

I nodded.

“What kind of self-defense were you talkin’ about?”

“I wish I knew,” I said.

“Yeah,” Tomika said, putting the treasured magazine carefully back into its ancient envelope. “I wish you did too.”

“THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH
black women,” Bill said.

I was cooking dinner for him and Sister and she was running late at choir rehearsal. I groaned loudly and rolled my eyes. “Is that the topic for the evening?”

“The essence of true love is surrender.” Bill would not be denied. “All the great poets agree on that. And if there is one thing a black woman will not do, it’s surrender! No wonder nobody can stay together for longer than twenty minutes at a time!”

A friend of theirs from California had decided to divorce her third husband after a tumultuous five-year marriage during which they had separated and reunited twelve times before calling
it quits. Bill’s theory was that the wife’s unwillingness to surrender had doomed the union from the start.

“I didn’t know we were at war,” I said.

“Bullshit!” Bill said. “And you know it! Jack Kerouac wrote ‘love is a duel’ forty years ago and nothing substantive has changed since then!”

“Do men have to surrender too?” I said, chopping vegetables.

“Of course not,” he said patiently, like he was speaking to a bright if rebellious child. “Men have to conquer, dominate, subdue. Look at the biology!
I will kick off! You will receive!
”

I groaned again and reached for my apron. “I thought football season was over.”

“You know I’m right.”

“I know I’m going to tell your wife on you when she gets here.”

“She knows I’m right too. Sarah and Kwame should have been together forever. He’s crazy about that woman, but she could never relax. Everything was combat with her. She could never give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“The benefit of the doubt about what?” I was flouring the chicken. I don’t eat meat anymore, but I was raving about dinner at Dot’s and Sister demanded some soul food, so fried chicken was
required
. I had already cooked the collard greens, mac and cheese and corn bread. We were going to make up for this high-cholesterol feast by being more conscientious about diet for the rest of the week, so I didn’t feel
too
guilty. I embrace the concept of moderation over abstinence. Less guilt-producing and, over the long haul, probably just as effective.

“The benefit of the doubt about everything,” Bill said, rummaging around in the refrigerator and pouring us each a glass of white wine. “The essence of marriage is trust.”

“Was he trustworthy?” I said, turning up the heat under my favorite cast-iron frying pan.

Bill looked hurt. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. You immediately assume it’s his fault!”

“No, I don’t,” I said, “but if she’s not a madwoman, I do assume there’s a reason for her behavior.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he said. “There doesn’t have to be a reason. There’s a free-floating rage that sisters carry that can lash out at any time, and it’s lethal. Absolutely anathema to a long-term love affair.”

Maybe Bill was onto something, but I wasn’t about to confess and prove his theory. “What’s free-floating rage got to do with surrender?”

“You ever try to make love when you’re angry?”

He had a point there. Whenever I felt myself getting annoyed at Nate, all my appreciation of his overall fineness and undeniable sex appeal flew right out the window.

I took out the plates and the silverware and handed them to Bill. “Make yourself useful.”

“You’re trying to distract me.” He grinned. “That means you know I’m right.”

Sister opened the back door and stepped inside. “Right about what?”

“Come and get your husband,” I said. “Quick!”

“Are you antagonizing the cook?” She gave him a quick kiss and hung her coat on the hook that ought to have her name on it.

“Every chance I get,” he said, smiling at her. “But only with love, of course!”

“Of course.” She turned to me. “What can I do to help?”

“Pour yourself a glass of wine,” I said, handing Bill the napkins
and the glasses. “You, on the other hand, have to work for your dinner.”

“No problem,” he said. “I know when I’m outnumbered. How about some music?”

“Great,” I said.

“Any specific requests?”

My music is organized around my own madness and no other. People who alphabetize and catalog their collections have been driven to distraction by the fact that at my house, Maxwell is nowhere near Bob Marley, who isn’t even in the same neighborhood as Johnny Mathis; but Bill was up for the challenge.

“Surprise me.”

Sister took a sip of her wine and smiled. “This smells like my mama’s house.”

I turned the chicken, being careful not to splatter the grease. Only amateurs leave a trail. “I take that as a true compliment.”

“Of the highest order,” she said. “Is Brother Anderson joining us?”

She was trying to sound casual, but she was
dippin’
.

“I invited him,” I said. “Unfortunately, he had a prior engagement.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t break it.”

I laughed. “He couldn’t. School board briefing.”

I lifted out a perfect, golden-brown drumstick to drain on a nearby paper towel, stirred the greens and put the mac and cheese in the microwave. From the living room, Mahalia Jackson was singing “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well.”

It was one of Bill’s favorites because of the shockingly bluesy piano that accompanies her. I love the lyrics. It’s always funny to
me that the woman thinks she can fool Jesus. Almost as funny as me trying to fool Sister.

I took a sip of wine and wiped my hands on my apron. I wanted to say this right. “You know that moment when you meet a brother and you feel like he’s open to another way of looking at things, even though he’s never heard any of this stuff before in exactly the way you’re saying it, but he really likes women and he’d love to understand them better because he knows that if he does, if he can just figure us out a little better, they—we!—will love him for it?”

“Sounds like me,” Bill said, returning and draping an affectionate arm around Sister’s shoulder. “Did Joyce tell you about my surrender theory?”

Sister held up her hand. “Please! No theories tonight!”

He tried to look hurt, but Sister just smiled and touched his cheek affectionately. “Even the Lord rested one day, sweetie.”

I arranged the chicken on my mother’s good platter.

“All right,” he said, pretending to grumble. “No point in trying to enlighten Negroes about anything serious when they smell chicken!”

“You got that right!”

Sister said the blessing and I stood up to serve their plates. Everything had turned out perfectly, if I do say so myself, and our dinner conversation was pretty much limited to “Please pass the greens” and “Does anybody want that other wing?” I shooed them away from the cleanup, stacked the dishes for later and poured us all some tea.

“A perfect day,” said Bill, looking for more music. He put on some Sidney Bechet and we all just sat there enjoying each other’s company and listening to Brother Bechet’s divine saxophone. I thought about Bill’s surrender theory. How could we be
expected to surrender? Things had gotten so bad Tee was buying a gun. Surrender wasn’t in it.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Sister said. I realized I’d been staring into the fire.

“Just woolgathering,” I said, using my grandmother’s favorite term for daydreaming.

“Woolgathering or worrying?” Sister knew a hedge when she heard one.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was thinking about Tee.”

“When I stopped by to see Nettie Smitherman this afternoon, she couldn’t stop talking about her,” Sister said. “The partnership must be working.”

Bill laughed. “Now that’s a match made in heaven. The only person who’ll have a chance of out talking either one is the other!”

“She’s going to buy a gun,” I said.

They exchanged startled glances. “Tee?”

Bill’s face clouded over. Back in Oakland, he’d lost one of his best students, a good friend and an older brother all to gun violence. Any talk of firearms was guaranteed to raise his blood pressure. “What for?”

“Junior threatened her.”

“What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, unwilling to argue about whether or not the words he’d uttered constituted a real threat or just the heat of the moment. “The point is, he scared her and the sheriff’s office acts like there’s nothing they can do.”

“You sound like you endorse the idea,” Bill said, sounding accusatory.

“You know I don’t,” I snapped. “I hate guns, but what’s she supposed to do?”

“What did the sheriff say?” Sister sounded really concerned. Her tone was as soothing to me as Bill’s had been immediately irritating. This free-floating rage was getting to be a constant companion and I didn’t like the feeling at all. I tried to match Sister’s equanimity.

“They said there’s not much they can do until he actually puts his hands on her.”

“Do you think buying a gun will keep him from doing that?” Bill’s tone had not improved.

“She’s scared.”

“What did you tell her?”

I sighed. This was not going to be the answer Bill wanted to hear, but we were all going to have to deal with the truth of the situation. “I told her if she was going to get a gun, she ought to know how to use it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nate’s going to take her to the firing range.”

Bill ran his hand over his face and looked at me like I had just lost my whole mind. “The firing range? What are you talking about, Joyce? You can’t think this is a good idea!”

His voice was trembling with remembered pain and rising indignation.

“You know I don’t!”

Bill stood up and started pacing. Sister’s eyes followed him.

“You’re supposed to say no!” he said, his face grim and tight. “You’re supposed to say ‘Guns don’t solve anything!’ ‘Practice peace!’ ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ You’re supposed to say
something!
”

“Hang on a second, sweetie,” Sister said softly.

Bill stopped pacing and sat down beside her slowly. “It’s a terrible idea,” he said, looking at me like I had been the one to bring it forward.

“You can’t think it’s any worse than I do,” I said.

His mouth curled into a smile that wasn’t one. “I’d be prepared to argue that.”

Bill was not above reminding me what he had suffered, but, unfortunately, my own credentials in the suffering area are impeccable, so I didn’t back off an inch.

“We’re not talking about you,” I said. “We’re talking about Tee.”

He looked at me. “I don’t think I deserve that.”

“Neither does she,” I said.

Bill stood up quickly.

“Calm down, sweetie,” Sister said, taking his hand like you do a kid’s when you’re crossing the street.

He took a deep breath. “I’m calm,” he said, looking at me. “I just don’t think I can talk about this anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, standing up too, but keeping my voice as calm as I could. “I’ll handle it and keep you posted.”

“Don’t bother,” he said.

That didn’t leave me much room to be conciliatory, so I stopped trying. “All right,” I said. “I won’t.”

Bill looked hurt. “Maybe we should call it a day,” he said quietly to Sister.

She looked at him for a minute like she was trying to gauge his mood accurately. “Why don’t you warm up the car, then, sweetie, and I’ll be right there?”

Bill pulled his coat on slowly and turned to look at me when he got to the door. “Sometimes you seem to think you’re the only one who loves these girls, but you’re not.”

“Talk is cheap,” I said, and he drew back like I’d slapped him.

He grabbed his hat and scarf. “Thanks for an almost perfect evening,” he said, and closed the door firmly behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Sister said, watching Bill out the back window, but I waved away her apology.

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” I said. “I need you to tell me what to do for Tee.”

She pulled her coat on and reached for her scarf. “You know what to do.”

“No,” I said. “I really don’t.”

“Go with her to the firing range,” she said quietly. “She’s got the right to feel safe.”

I should have known she would understand. “I hate this.”

She patted my shoulder. “Me too. That’s why we’ve got to figure out something else
fast!
”

“Can’t be fast enough for me,” I said, opening the door for her and stepping out. “Think Bill will stay mad at me?”

She dropped her voice and kissed my cheek as if she were really saying good-bye. “Does he ever?”

He opened the door for her when she got to the car, but she smiled at him and said something I couldn’t hear from where I was standing. Whatever it was, he looked at her and then back at me. She touched his shoulder with the slightest suggestion of an encouraging shove and he walked back across the yard, up the steps, wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight; a real hug; a Bill hug.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not your fault or mine.”

“Apology accepted,” I said, hugging him back, wondering what Sister had said to change his mind so quickly. I knew we didn’t have a real difference of opinion, but once Bill gets dug in behind a position, sometimes it can take days for him to let it go.

He leaned back and looked at me without taking his arm from around my shoulders. “So you’re not mad at me?”

I smiled. “I can’t be mad at you.”

“Then tell me again why we’re going home so early?”

“Because you’re stubborn as a mule!”

“That may be the maybe,” he said, “but I’m not too far gone to see the value of a strategic surrender.”

“Especially when there’s peach cobbler at stake,” said Sister, herding us both back into the house.

I laughed. “Strategic surrender, huh?”

Bill looked properly sheepish. “That’s the problem with surrender,” he said. “Nobody ever lets you forget it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, dishing up the cobbler, glad we were all back on the same side. “Your secret is safe with me.”