Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (25 page)

“It’s amazing how quickly I became consumed by my own ambition. How I became caught up in my own hype. Suddenly, my life in New York drifted further and further into the past, so much so that I no longer seemed to be able to associate with it. I got my husband to give me a divorce. I sent money back, loads of it, and swore him to secrecy about our relationship.

“He was a good man, my husband. Loyal and caring. I was never greatly in love with him, but I knew he could give me a nice, trouble-free life. I knew I would never go hungry being with him. When I became pregnant, he gave up all his dreams of being a performer and fell back on his electrical skills. Just so he could feed his new family.

“Anyway, once I was free to date who I wanted, I started spending more and more time with that producer, and I became as much a part of his being as he was of mine. He started confiding in me, telling me things he had never told anyone before. He said he wanted to marry me and that he needed to lay everything out on the table. No secrets. And some of the things he had done to get to where he was were terrible. Beyond terrible, but he admitted them to me. And I think I loved him more because of it.”

“Things like what?” I ask.

“That part I’ll keep hidden,” she says, with a sad smile on her face. “I figured his opening up was his way of saying he really did love me. I guess I didn’t realize he had so much inner turmoil. He just needed someone to be his sounding board. Anyone. But I decided that if he could be so open, I had no choice but to be the same with him—since our love was so great.” She lets out this strange little laugh. “And I had a secret that was boring a hole through me. A very big one. And so one night, as we were relaxing in front of the fire, I got up and went to my suitcase. I took out some pictures I had hidden in the lining and I put them on the sofa.”

She motions for her purse and I give it to her. She pulls out her wallet and fishes through one of the compartments for a couple of old black-and-white pictures enclosed in plastic. She hands the first one to me.

“My husband and me on our wedding day.”

I try not to look shocked, but I’m pretty sure I don’t succeed. I think back to the picture on Ms. Downer’s counter, and I realize there wasn’t a shadow at all over that baby’s
face. That baby was black. And now I understand why. The old lady’s husband is as dark as me—dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin.

“I thought people couldn’t get married back then if they were … you know. If they were different,” I say. “Wasn’t that a crime?”

“Edgar and I weren’t as different as you might think,” she says. But I’m not following her. And then she hands me another picture.

“My parents,” she says. “The picture is so old you might not be able to tell, but both my mother and father were what people used to call half-caste or mulatto.”

“Whoa” is about all I can come up with.

“That night when I showed Sam this picture, I felt lighter for getting such a heavy secret off my chest. I felt that it would bring us even closer. I thought that because he cared for me, my parents both being part black would have little effect on him. But after I shared my burning secret, he reacted with so much hatred and animosity, it was as if he became a different person. He told me to leave Hollywood, to just disappear without a trace, as if I had never existed. He told me he would do anything to prevent the shame this bit of information would cause him, his studio, and his family if the truth ever got out. He told me he’d have me killed if I didn’t leave. And the funny thing was, he represented himself as a man who believed in equality for everyone.

“I never meant to deceive anyone. I went to California knowing exactly who and what I was, hoping I could change things. I thought I would work in classy black films, like the
ones Oscar Micheaux made. But fate intervened. Someone who just assumed I was South American found me, and I simply didn’t say anything to make him aware of the truth. There were lovely actresses like Nina Mae McKinney, like Fredericka Washington, and because they were black, their careers were so limited. Fredericka could pass for white, but she chose not to. I guess I could have made this choice too … but then wonderful things started happening so quickly, and before I knew it, there was no way to dig out of the hole I found myself in. My life was now a thousand times better than I could ever have imagined. I just decided I would go along with it. But unfortunately, with ‘passing’ came some monumental sacrifices. There was no way I could be seen with my half-black parents, with a black husband, with my daughter … so I made a decision I’ve lived to regret.

“In the end, I really did disappear. I went to France for a while, started a whole new life there. But I missed the adoration. I missed the life I had gotten accustomed to. I was so confused and unhappy. For a while, I just spiraled down. Went through a depression I thought I would never climb out from.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there quietly, stealing these little glances at Ms. Downer. I can’t believe she’s black like me. Well, maybe not completely like me, but partly. And I can’t believe how crazy her life has been.

“Faye, I’m telling you this now for a reason. I know I’m always talking about regrets and how one bad decision can affect so many other things in your life. I just want you to
see that this doesn’t come from an empty place. This isn’t just about an old woman wanting to hear herself talk and pointing her finger and saying ‘Do as I say.’ It really does come from me not wanting your precious, young, promising life to end up in the sadness mine has. So when you ask if I accept your apology, of course I do. But I want to make sure it’s not a hollow one. I want to make sure you’re not just saying it because you think it’s what you’re supposed to say or because you think it’s what I want to hear. I want to make sure you’ll do your best to really think before you act, because sometimes what’s done can never be undone.”

I am completely
freaking out. I just felt something tickle my right leg, and I’m quite certain it wasn’t a feather. I’m sure of this because I’m not outside on a field trip to the Botanic Garden, or in the yard at school, or even in Prospect Park. I’m in my kitchen, under the table, kneeling on the cold linoleum floor. And my nightie stops just below my knees, leaving the lower part of my legs very bare and very available to any of the nighttime critters that inhabit our apartment. If I wasn’t trying to be secretive, I would let out a scream that would wake the dead. See, I know it’s a cockroach. I can feel its nasty little legs brushing against my skin. I squirm and jerk my feet this way and that, but I have to be careful not to kick the metal legs of any of the dining chairs and wake Mama. If she comes out and finds me under the table with the telephone off its wall mount, along with a flashlight, a pen, and pages from a phone book, she will surely pop a blood vessel. I mean, I’m pretty sure I look as if I’m in the middle of some supersecret spy mission.

After one more backward kick, I no longer feel any creepy-crawlies on my body. I want to shine the flashlight behind me and make sure whatever was violating my person is really gone, but I decide it’s probably best not to. No telling what else I might find back there.

Though it might seem like it, I’m not losing my mind, camping out under my kitchen table in the dead of night. It’s been three weeks since I got that morsel of information about Ms. Downer’s daughter from that archivist, but I’ve finally figured out what to do with it. I’m going to try to undo the old lady’s greatest regret by finding her daughter and talking to her myself. I’m going to march right up to her and tell her just how much Ms. Downer loves her and still thinks of her every moment of every day of her life, and wants to be her mother again. I can’t stop imagining their first moments together after nearly half a century. I can’t stop imagining the joy and the tears and the laughter. The thought of that gives me the courage to remain on the cold kitchen floor despite the threat of an insect encounter and the sudden appearance of what would surely be a thoroughly aggravated Mama.

I came up with the idea in, of all places, Sister Margaret Theresa Patricia Bernadette’s class, then hoped and prayed the film buff would show up at Ms. Downer’s again during one of my visits. I figured I could somehow get him to give me the daughter’s address. But he never did turn up. And then the old lady started looking at me funny, telling me I was acting suspicious, so I just cracked and asked her when she was expecting another visit from him.

“William has gotten about as much information as he can from me. The book is more or less completed, so no more scheduled visits. I suppose if any other questions come up, I’ll get a call from him. Or maybe he’ll drop by if he feels like wasting an afternoon on a casual visit with an old woman.”

It’s not like I could have just come out and asked her for the film buff’s number, so I had to really put on my thinking cap. Anyway, there I was lying in bed a couple of nights ago being grossed out by the thought of what Mama and JCJ were doing in the bedroom right next to mine, when it dawned on me that I had enough information to find this Delaine Lawson person myself. I just needed to do some
Charlie’s Angels
–type investigating.

I couldn’t remember whether the film buff had said Delaine Lawson worked at a hospital, a clinic, or a nursing home. I just knew it was something medical and in Manhattan, which led me to the main library’s reference section for the first step of my mission. See, they have phone listings for every borough in New York City there. A fistful of change later, I had a Xeroxed copy of the Yellow Pages listings for all Manhattan health facilities.

So, back to me under the table, which is where I’ve been for the past hour or so, and also where I’ve been for several hours the past couple of nights. This is step two. And I swear, as I dial each number, my fingers shake so much it’s as if I’m coming down with a sudden case of palsy. Trying to maneuver a rotary dial quietly is just about impossible, and since Mama is too cheap to get a push-button phone, I’m forced to suffer. Jerry’s not here tonight, which is shocking
in itself, considering he camps out here most every night now. But that means Mama’s got no diversion, so I’m forced to be ghostly quiet. The only way to cut down on the loud clicking noise the dial makes is to keep my pointer finger in the finger hole and slowly crank the dial around and back to its resting position. Now, this isn’t too bad if a phone number has a lot of ones and twos in it—those are closest to the finger stop—but when it’s a bunch of eights, nines, and zeroes, forget it. It ends up taking forever for those numbers to make a full rotation. So here I am, going down the listing of medical establishments. But between my slow-motion dialing, being put on hold, and being transferred, it takes like ten minutes to complete each call. Anyway, I might not have mastered my dialing technique, but I have mastered my conversation:

“Such-and-such hospital/clinic/nursing home,” the person on the other end will say.

“Hi, I’m trying to reach Delaine Lawson,” I respond.

“What department, please?”

“Uh, nursing?”

“Sure, hold while I transfer.” Then there’s a pause, followed by more ringing.

“Nurses’ station.”

“Hi, I’m trying to reach Delaine Lawson.”

“Is she a patient?”

“No. A nurse.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have a Nurse Lawson.”

“Oh, could you transfer me back to the operator, please?”

“No problem. Please hold.” Pause. Ring.

“Operator.”

“Yeah, I was calling for Delaine Lawson. I thought she was a nurse, but I guess she’s not. See, my brother took a message saying I got a call from her. This was earlier in the day, but seeing that the call came from a ______”—I fill in the blank with
hospital, clinic
, or
nursing home—
“I thought it might be important. But he didn’t write down what the call was for. Can you just check if there’s a Delaine Lawson in another department?”

Okay, that last part I came up with in today’s religious studies class. I had to think of something, because a couple of places got snotty with me after I got snotty with them for insisting that I had to tell them what department she was in. I wanted to say, “I don’t even know who this person is. I’m on a wild-goose chase here, trying to do a good deed for once in my depraved life. Can you just give me a break and help me out?” But that little speech I came up with has been working wonders.

The thing is, over the past two nights, and a couple of times during the days when I was able to scrounge up enough change and stake out a pay phone, I’ve gone through every clinic listed. And every hospital. Thank goodness there are only so many of those. Now I’m almost through with the nursing homes, and I still haven’t found her. I’ve been dealing with charley horses, finger cramps, nasty roaches, my feet going numb, lack of sleep, and the possibility of my perpetually irate mother busting me, and I still haven’t come across Delaine Lawson. I’m doing everything to try not to lose hope.

“Ridgeway Nursing Home,” a lady’s voice says.