I Wish I Had a Red Dress (7 page)

THE SUPER BOWL STARTED
at four, but we told everybody they were welcome anytime after noon, so I went over early to open up and turn on the heat. The pale sunlight was promising another cold January day, but no snow was predicted until tomorrow.

I didn’t see the small bag hanging from The Circus doorknob until I reached for it to put my key in. It was a soft sack made of purple velvet and tied at the neck with a golden cord.
Sister’s been by here.

I took the bag inside and laid it on my desk, turned up the heat and flipped on the lights. The place had never looked better. At the far end of the community room, Tee had gathered all the toys in one big play area. On the low table we use for the kids, she put out our collection of puzzles, the communal coloring books
and a huge box of crayons. Picture books were arranged magazine style on a freshly painted rack and a trio of uniformly chocolate-brown baby dolls sat in their tiny plastic high chairs waiting for someone to give them their even tinier plastic bottles.

At the other end of the room, we had set up the VCR and stacked sitting pillows nearby for easy access and comfortable viewing. We watch a lot of movies around here. It’s usually pretty easy to spot somebody making a bad choice in the movies. That’s why we all holler when the terminally naïve teenage victim skips off to picnic in the woods. My hope is that if they can recognize preventable foolishness on the screen, the lessons they learn will carry over into their real lives.

Of course, I’d rather they got some of this information from reading classics like
The Color Purple
and
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, but as my mother used to say, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Once I told my mother she should collect all her sayings and write them down and she said writing books for black folks was like doing sleight of hand for the blind. My father told her to stop being cynical, but she just rolled her eyes. My mother was not what you would call “a race woman.”

Waiting to Exhale
was the first movie I tried to get them to analyze. All of our regulars were here that day: Tee, Nikki, Tiffany Smith, Patrice O’Neal, Sherika Hill, Sheila Lattimore, Deena Anderson and Regina Johnson. At first everybody said what sets all the bad stuff in motion is when the philandering husband informs his wife that he won’t be taking her to the company Christmas party because his mistress doesn’t want to be alone and “she shouldn’t have to be.”

“Plus,” Nikki had said, rolling her eyes, “to add insult to injury, she’s a
white
woman.”

I agreed that was a pretty terrible moment, but I argued that things had gone bad long before he appeared in the mirror over his wife’s shoulder wearing that beautiful tux and a look that said whatever the problem was, it was all her fault.

“When was it, then?” Patrice asked, sounding doubtful.

“I think her defining moment came when she started doing things for him that she didn’t want to do,” I said, “like postponing her plans to open her own business, continuing to make love after he started counting—”

“Puttin’ her kids in a school where they were the only black ones,” offered Deena, a devoted mother of twins.

“Not puttin’ him out after she found out he was foolin’ around,” Regina added.

“So are you sayin’ it’s her fault?” Tee was still frowning.

“Not her
fault,
” I said. “Her
choice
. She didn’t have to stay with him if he didn’t respect her.”

They were quiet for a minute. The idea of leaving all that status, material wealth and male protection behind on principle would take some getting used to.
How many women ever got to live in a house like that?

“Well, I know one thing,” said Tiffany, cuddling Diamante, her six-week-old son by T.J., the Lattimore brother currently serving time for armed robbery, “Miss Girl sure messed homeboy’s stuff up big time.”

There was admiring laughter and a chorus of
amens
for the wronged wife’s dramatic destruction of the contents of her husband’s carefully organized closet.

“I like when she tossed that match in and set the whole mess on fire!” added Sherika, who didn’t have any kids yet, but often had one of her younger sisters with her.

“A woman got ten years for that in Texas,” I reminded them. My comment elicited a general groan.

“See there, Miz J.” Tiffany spoke for the group. “You always takin’ the fun out of stuff. In real life, Gregory Hines ain’t necessarily gonna move in next door to Loretta Devine either, but let us have that, okay?”

I made a mental note to remember that today. It’s important not to spend every waking moment teaching somebody something. You wear people out. Sometimes, it’s better to just
let it be.
Besides, Gregory Hines has to live somewhere, right?

In the small kitchen, Tee had paper plates, plastic cups, a case of fruit juice boxes, trash bags and a mountain of Pampers. The floor had been swept, the bathrooms had been scrubbed and the only snow on the front steps had fallen after midnight. There was absolutely nothing else left to do, so I sat down to open Sister’s bag of goodies.

The sack contained a fat white candle, two small blue bowls, a bottle of spring water, a red silk rose, two small onions, a packet of matches from a restaurant whose name was not written in English and a note.

Dear Joyce (it said in her trademark bright purple ink), Once again, you and The Sewing Circus have pointed the way. I’m enclosing all necessary ingredients for one of my favorite anti-Super Bowl rituals.:

1. Burn the crackly brown skin of two onions;
   
2. Put out a bowl of clear water and a flower that blooms red;
   
3. Light a candle;
   
4. Invite the spirits;
   
5. Sing a love song.
   

Please complete all steps in order.

She underlined that, which was just like her. Give you a magic spell to perform and then direct you to complete all steps
in order
like it’s the math portion of your SATs.

I crumbled up the onion skin in one bowl and emptied the water into the other one. I laid the rose at the base of the candle and struck a match, but what was I going to sing? I lit the onion skins to buy some time and watched them smoke and curl while I put another match to the fat candle and smelled the scent of spice and jasmine. I closed my eyes and invited all the spirits I could stand,
but what about the song?

The only one that came immediately to mind was the Barney classic, “I love you, you love me.” I was hoping for something a little more soulful, but first thought, best thought. It’s the kids’ hands-down favorite, plus it’s a song even I can sing without worrying about hitting the high notes. I’d hate to mess up a perfectly good ritual trying to belt out an acceptable Dr. Feelgood.

I dipped my finger in the water for luck.

“I love you/you love me . . .”

I could hardly hear myself. I cleared my throat.

“We’re a happy family . . .”

I sang it through twice, and you know what? By the end of the second time, I was starting to sing a little louder. By the third time, I didn’t even feel silly anymore. By the time I finished a
cycle of five, I felt so good I started to hit a chorus or two of “Dr. Feelgood” just for the hell of it, but I didn’t want to press my luck. Barney is one thing. Aretha Franklin is something else altogether.

THE LADIES’ USHER BOARD
had agreed to prepare a real Sunday supper for the party and three of our regulars, Sherika, Regina and Patrice, had been charged with delivering the precious cargo of baked chicken, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, corn bread, sliced tomatoes and assorted desserts. They were all crammed into Regina’s big old Pontiac, along with her two boys and Lil’ Sonny.

Patrice climbed out carrying a large, foil-covered pan while Regina unbuckled the kids and handed them out to Sherika.

“Hey, Miz J!”

“Hey, Sheri!” I was pleased to see her. “I thought you’d be watching the game with Brian.”

Her boyfriend was the captain of the high school football team and had headed for college in September on an athletic
scholarship. They’d been going together since third grade and still seemed to be enamored of each other. They always watched the Super Bowl together so they could fantasize about how great it was going to be when he was playing in it. They were our longest-running love affair and we all felt proprietary.

“Recruiting trip,” she said proudly, balancing Regina’s youngest on her hip and leading Lil’ Sonny by the hand. “He’s in Atlanta.”

“Morehouse?”

She nodded, shooing Regina’s oldest inside as he was trying to make a case for being grown enough to carry in a chocolate layer cake without dropping it. “I told him don’t be down there lookin’ at none of them Georgia peaches either!”

“Brian ain’t crazy.” Patrice ducked inside with what smelled like a pan of Anna Mae Watson’s famous macaroni and cheese.

“You got that right!” Sherika laughed.

“Tee say she on her way,” Regina said, heading for the kitchen. “She ridin’ with Deena and the kids.”

When I got back inside, I relit Sister’s ritual candle. I was trying to decide if I had time for another chorus of the Barney song when I heard Tomika coming down the hall. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I hear Tee before I see her.

“I
like
Denzel Washington,” she was saying as she followed Mavis and Deena’s twins in the office door. Deena must have been questioning the choice of movies for today’s screenings.

“Everything looks great,” I said.

“I told you we were ready,” Tee said proudly, plopping down a plastic bag of videos on her desk and tossing her head to set in motion the profusion of blond braided extensions framing her face.

“Except for the movies,” Deena said, kneeling to help the
kids shed their outdoor clothing. They are helpless before the intricacies of tightly zippered down coats, mittens on a string and scarves that covered everything but their eyes.

Tomika turned toward her, ignoring Mavis’s futile struggle with her jacket zipper. “Did you bring any?”

“You know I ain’t got no Blockbuster card.”

“Well, there you go,” Tee said, bending down to help her daughter. “When you bring the videos, you pick what you like.
I
like Denzel.”

“I like him too,” Deena whined, sounding just like her twins when they get tired. She’s probably where they learned it. “But how ’bout a little Will Smith and Chris Tucker every now and then?”

“Comedians,” Tee sniffed, pulling off Mavis’s snow boots. “Denzel is a serious actor.”

“Okay, how about a little Sam Jackson, then?” Under their coats, the twins were wearing identical pink jumpers. At sixteen, Deena got pregnant on purpose by the best-looking man she’d ever seen to ensure that she would have a pretty child, but she did better than that. She had two identical seven-pound girls who immediately became part of hospital legend for their abundance of luxurious black curls. When the nurses tied their hair up in pink ribbons on top of their heads and declared them real beauties, Deena was satisfied.

I could tell she was hoping for a compromise, but these days, as far as Tomika was concerned, there was no black actor other than Denzel Washington, period.

“Sam Jackson?
Please!
” Tomika said, unwrapping a three-foot scarf from around Mavis’s neck, who immediately drew a deep, grateful breath like she had been about to smother under
all those well-meaning layers of hand-knit wool. During last year’s knitting craze, everybody was constantly making scarves, sweaters, mittens. We were drowning in afghans. Then suddenly it passed. Nobody was knitting anymore. But there was still the question of all those scarves.

“Why not Sam Jackson?” Deena was unable to resign herself to another showing of
Malcolm X.
“He’s been married to the same woman since he was in college. Got a kid too.”

Tomika stuffed Mavis’s mittens into her jacket pocket. “You see
Pulp Fiction
?”

Deena sighed and retied the twins’ matching pink ribbons. “That was a movie. We talkin’ about real life.”

Tomika looked pained. “I’m talkin’ about the fact that movies always show you somethin’ that’s goin’ on deep down inside the actor.”

Deena looked skeptical. “Where’d you get that from?”

I was curious too. Had she been watching the Actors Studio sessions on cable?

“I saw this guy one time on TV. Blow!” Tomika put a Kleenex under Mavis’s nose, and she obliged her mother with an enthusiastic
honk.
“He played one of the gangsters in that movie
Goodfellas
and he said you have to reach down inside and draw out that part of you that is the character, but that it has to be in there already or it won’t work.”

“So what are you sayin’?” Deena was trying to hold a wriggling twin on her lap long enough to tie her shoe. “You don’t like Sam Jackson because you think deep down he’s that crazy hit man who kept quotin’ the Bible and blowin’ people away?”

“I’m not sayin’ he’s ever done that for real,” Tomika said calmly. “All I’m sayin’ is,
it’s in him,
or else he couldn’t play it so
good. Denzel ain’t never played no part like that in his life. Plus, he won’t kiss a white woman on-screen no matter how much money they throw at him.”

“That’s cool, but . . .” Deena knew she was going down for the third time. The best she could possibly hope for now was being allowed to decide between
The Hurricane
and
Remember the Titans.

“Sam Jackson has still made some good movies.”

Tomika tucked Mavis’s shirt into her pants. “Sam Jackson always killin’ somebody. You see
Shaft?
”

“He didn’t kill nobody in
Eve’s Bayou,
” I said.

“That’s right!” said Deena, emboldened by the presence of an ally.

I had watched that one on video not long ago. It felt like being in the middle of somebody else’s dream. Mostly, I remember how beautiful those actresses managed to look while their worlds fell apart. That one with the dimples lost three husbands, and when the mysterious stranger showed up at her front door asking to be number four, she put on her pearls and rose to the occasion.
Amazing.
I’ve only lost one husband and the idea of taking another is inconceivable.

Tomika sniffed and smoothed the edges of her hair. “
Eve’s Bayou
doesn’t count.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody saw it,” Tomika said, like she was stating the painfully obvious.

“
I
saw it.” I was unwilling to dismiss such a beautiful dreamscape just because it didn’t crack the box office top ten. “I liked it.”

Tee smiled at me like that was an amusing fact, but completely irrelevant. “Of course
you
liked it, Miz J. You like
foreign
movies too.” And she smiled sweetly at me and Deena and herded the three little girls down to the play area, where the baby dolls were waiting patiently for their breakfast.

Deena sighed loudly. “Tee carryin’ this Denzel thing too far. Look at this!”

She had a point. Tomika had brought six videos:
The Hurricane, Mo’ Better Blues, Remember the Titans, The Pelican Brief, Devil in a Blue Dress,
and of course,
Malcolm X.
Not that Tee was political. She just liked that red zoot suit favored by the preconversion Malcolm when he first hooks up with West Indian Archie and becomes a
sho’ nuff
gangster.

“Why don’t you wait and see if anybody else brings anything?” I said, sitting down at my desk where someone had left a small crayon drawing of what looked like a blue duck wearing a bright red hat.

“They
know
better,” Deena whined. “She gonna play what she want anyway.”

I took a deep breath. This is the way they all tend to think:

1. Identify the problem (always someone else’s fault);

2. Identify the cause of the problem (always external);

3. Resign yourself to finding no solution to it; and finally,

4. Restate the whole thing in a way that emphasizes both your powerlessness and the mysterious implacability of your perceived opponent.

The hardest thing for me to do was not to say, “Look, it’s easy! Why don’t you just bring some videos of your own and we’ll show those. If you don’t have any, why don’t you get a Blockbuster card and get some? And while you’re at it, why don’t you rent a few movies you haven’t seen before or follow one actress’s
career to plot her growth and development or track down some black classics from before you were born?”

The problem is, all of those are
choices,
and that is what they are not used to having. What they know how to do instead is blame, deny, deceive, distrust and abdicate. The only way to break the pattern is not to supply the options. So I didn’t say anything, which she rightly took to mean I was waiting for her to figure it out.

She sighed and then brightened suddenly. “Can we vote on it?”

I nodded. “Sure we can.”

I didn’t ask her what exactly we’d be voting on in this particular case. The important thing was that she had figured out something to do besides sit there and complain.
One small step for Deena Anderson. One giant step for The Sewing Circus.