Searching for Tina Turner (7 page)

He pulls packages out of the suitcase one at a time and with practiced flourish. “In a few of the temples, men could wear
orange wraps like the monks. I thought I’d spare you that.” He tosses a plastic bag to Kendrick, who catches it with one hand,
and waits for Kendrick to open his bag of designer-rip-off shirts.

“Hella cool. Thanks, Dad.”

“And you, Camille, should know that some people consider dance and drama the very essence of culture in Bali. Since we all
know what a drama queen you can be…” Camille feigns offense with a look half smile, half pout. Randall grabs her hand, dances
a one, two cha-cha-cha, like they did at the cotillion months earlier, and hands Camille a pouch. “I bought these to help.”

Camille pulls the plastic apart and slips bangles onto one arm then her other until the bag is empty. “Thanks, Dad. I love
this stuff.” There are at least a hundred of them: silver and gold, colored rhinestones glitter from some, others are painted
in vibrant blues, reds, and yellows; they ping and clink when she shakes her arm. The bangles complete her outfit; a long,
ruffled skirt, homespun scarf around her head, her bare feet.

“I bought traditional outfits—one for Sharon and one for my secretary.” Randall removes two flattened, white paper bags tied
with rough string from his suitcase and stuffs them into his leather bag. “They worked hard for me on this end. They kept
me on track and the local wolves at bay. I couldn’t have gotten my work done without them.”

“Where’s Mom’s gift?” Camille rummages through Randall’s suitcase.

“If I recall, you’re not into material things anymore.” Randall stretches and saunters to the bedroom window. He yawns and
looks directly at Lena without a hint of a smile or grin or taunt of possibilities to come. “You have everything you need.
Right?”

The smile on Lena’s face is telltale; her jewelry box is crowded with expensive trinkets and intricate charms from every trip
that Randall has ever taken. She gets Randall’s mockery and understands his message. “That’s right. I am truly blessed.”

“Aw, he’s kidding.” Kendrick gives Randall an all-knowing wink. “Give her the goods, Pops.”

Camille looks from her father to mother and back to her father’s face for a sign that Randall is indeed teasing, is indeed
about to pull some shiny bauble from one of his pockets. “Have these, Mom.” Camille tugs a few bracelets from her wrists and
slides them on to Lena’s arm. “Give her the outfit you said was for Sharon, Dad.”

“It’s just a token, not something your mom would like.” Randall’s short, urgent sigh, Lena tells herself, is exasperation
not exhaustion. “But, I can always treat Sharon to an expensive meal.”

Whenever Randall comes home from his trips, Lena unpacks his suitcase. A habit turned expectation that grew into its own ritual
over the years and gave them time alone; like picking him up from the airport before he became a bigwig. Sometimes he sat
on the side of the bed or in the chaise and regaled her with road gossip. Sometimes he waited for Camille and Kendrick to
leave their room to tell her how much he missed her, or shut the door and showed her.

Now Lena takes
I, Tina
from the nightstand and walks past their king-sized bed, the rectangle of his open suitcase, and into her office. He is punishing
her, she knows, punishing her for questioning the life he wants for her: be the good girl, follow the rules. She reads her
email, goes onto the official Tina Turner site and resists the temptation to rush to the stereo, to turn off Coltrane’s saxophone
just now beginning to drift through the house and exchange it for Tina’s music as loud as the speakers will permit.

Near the end of her time with Ike, Tina visited a friend who practiced Buddhism. The visual of the woman, though not her name,
is still in Lena’s head: the woman, and soon afterward Tina, made a small altar before which they could sit and chant and
mold a ritual to soothe their spirits and make them strong.

Two stubby candles still sit on her desk. With a candle on either side, and a stack of Tina’s CDs atop the paperback, Lena
reminds herself to pick up incense and a holder, perhaps a crystal, tomorrow. Her ritual, she thinks, does not have to be
elaborate. The process of lighting the candles, of slowing down her thoughts, of scanning random passages from
I, Tina
helps her to gather, little by little, the sum of all the parts—good and not—to help her to press on.

f   f   f

By the time she steps into the bathroom, Randall is already soaking in the tub. Two glasses of wine, his nearly empty, sit
on the marble-tiled ledge. He slurps his wine and, eyes closed, rests his head against the tiled wall behind him. “Ahhhh.
I needed this. Thanks, hon.”

Lena kneels beside the tub so that her face looks directly at his and drags her hand through the scented water, forcing steam
and the odor of musk to drift in the air between them. “I can’t help but wonder, Randall, how keeping you on track makes your
secretary and your assistant more worthy of your thoughtfulness than your wife.”

“It’s no big deal, Lena. You don’t like cheap stuff anyway. I’ll take you to San Francisco next week. You can pick up something
then.”

“That’s not the point, Randall.”

“The point is I’m home, not with them, and I’m tired.”

Her boots come off slowly, as do her cashmere sweater and tight jeans. She tosses them next to the four pairs left on the
floor from earlier this evening before she settled on the French ones, to show off her hips. Randall did not notice her hips
or the jeans at the airport, just as at this minute, eyes closed in a trance of concentration, he doesn’t notice her nakedness.

The water sloshes against the sides of the long tub when Lena stirs it with her foot. When she steps in, Randall opens his
eyes and leans forward. He cups her breasts and massages them in that way that always makes her moan. Lena pulls away before
she does, before she starts something even her momentary meditation has left her still too upset to finish.

“I’m already feeling the jet lag.” Randall scoops hot water over his chest and head and repeats this motion two more times.
Wrinkled eyebrows keep the rivulets from his eyes. “I’m ready to sleep in my own bed.” He swallows the rest of his wine with
one quick swig, steps out of the tub, and dries himself roughly before going off to bed.

f   f   f

The rasp of Randall’s snores matches the sawing sounds of the final minutes of a movie on TV. Sleep is the only time that
anyone would label Randall peaceful. If she is awake, when he lies motionless in the middle of the night like this, Lena often
pokes his shoulder, his neck, his thigh in anticipation of the slightest movement: proof he is still alive and well. Half-open
eyes tell Lena he is somewhere between dream and arousal.

Randall tugs her close, tickles her with his tongue in a new place, and she gasps from the sensation. They blend together
in their familiar way. She surrenders to his touch, the bristle of his mustache, a hint of musk oil. There is no urgency to
his movement, yet he comes swiftly, leaving Lena wanting more.

L
ulu and John Henry’s dream house looks the same as the day they bought it in 1965. The house is painted a pale color somewhere
between beige and rust; a lamp that switches on at 4:30 p.m. and off at 7:30 a.m. every spring, summer, winter, and fall.
Year round Christmas lights, more fragments than bulbs, loop under the eaves and around the three-sided bay window that dominates
the front of the house.

Whenever Bobbie and Lena complained of how embarrassed they were by the lights and the hideous, old-fashioned paint, John
Henry told them he didn’t have a problem with change as long as it stayed away from him. The biggest change he’d made in his
life, he told his daughters every time, was coming to California, and, since he wasn’t a risk taker, he saw no need to push
his luck.

“Lulu? You in the backyard?” Lena ducks around the low branches of the California oak where she and Bobbie always wanted John
Henry to build a tree house. The limbs of snowball hydrangeas straggle over the path; low pink azaleas, in ironic harmony
with the painted red cement, ramble below. Two garbage cans filled with dead leaves sit in the middle of the path. This Wednesday,
like every Wednesday of the eighteen months since John Henry passed, Lena feels like she has become her father. She lugs the
trash to the curb where neighbors’ cans jaggedly line the street up one side and down the other like whole notes in a measure
of music.

Once done, she heads for the backyard. The yard that used to be John Henry’s pride and joy is unkempt in a way that shocks
this daughter of parents once so fastidious: overgrown hedges, scraggly lawn, brown spots on camellia leaves, wiry rose bushes;
an apple tree branch hangs doggedly parallel to its trunk.

Lulu’s posture is effortlessly straight-backed. She holds a tarnished brass nozzle attached to a green-striped garden hose
in her left hand and listens intently to someone’s conversation on the other end of the cell phone squeezed between her right
ear and shoulder. The bluish rinse that Lulu tints her thin, curly afro with glistens in the sun. Not one hair on her head
is out of place, no wrinkles in her blouse, not a drop of water on her pants. Lena can’t help but smile at how beautiful her
mother still is, how the color of her clothes warms her skin.

Phone still in place, Lulu holds two conversations at the same time. “Tell me your
husband
didn’t see you looking like that? At least you could’ve put on lipstick.” Lulu never goes without her trademark lipstick.
Today, her fuchsia lips match the budding azaleas, her cardigan, and her loose ankle-length pants. “He back yet?”

Lulu is a petite woman; her frame frail and shrinking with each passing year. Lena bends, touching her lips to Lulu’s cheek,
and sniffs. Floral perfume is Lulu’s trademark, too; its fragrance comfortable and reassuring; her forgetfulness is not. Three
times over the last month, Lena has had to remind Lulu of details she should know—Randall is out of town, Kendrick is home
and not away at college, Camille is about to graduate from high school, Bobbie lives in New York.

“Randall came home yesterday. Remember?”

“That son-in-law of mine is always off somewhere—China, Paris, New York—making big-time deals.” Lulu shouts into the phone
in the way octogenarians often do, forgetting the sophistication of cell phone technology. The hose falls to the ground and
snakes beneath her folding chair. “He’s the executive vice president at TIDA, you know. The only black that high up. I’m surprised
Lena didn’t go with him and stay in one of those nine-hundred-dollar-a-night hotels he loves.”

Lulu is Randall’s biggest fan, and, on some level, Lena is both proud and bored with Lulu’s exaggerations. Lulu winks, covers
the handset, and mouths words that Lena cannot decipher because, despite this habit her mother has had for all of Lena’s life—in
church, behind John Henry’s back, in rooms full of noisy relatives—Lena is not good at lip-reading. Lulu tells whomever is
on the other end of the line she has to go and clamps the phone shut.

“You need a gardener, Lulu. What if I can’t come over every Wednesday?”

“I’m not helpless.” Lulu’s knuckles are knotted with arthritis. She flexes her fingers and lays her hands on Lena’s. “How’s
my baby girl doin’ on this glorious day?”

Lulu presses her hands to Lena’s temples. No need, Lena believes, to bother Lulu. John Henry and Lulu’s marriage was different,
maybe exceptional. They grew up in a Mississippi town with only a postal route number and no name. The day John Henry came
home from World War II, he asked for Lulu’s hand in marriage. The two of them worked hard, raised their girls, and spoiled
them as rotten as they could on their government salaries.

John Henry took care of everything. He doted on his wife. He drove Lulu to work, to church, the grocery store, and shopping
and brought his check home every Friday. In return, Lulu took care of him, served his dinner every evening at six sharp—a
saucer of finely chopped onions beside his plate no matter what she cooked. She ironed his clothes and let him play poker
with his buddies once a month.

“Did you ever feel like you were… losing yourself?” Once Lena believed her attachment to a powerful mate completed her. Power
shifted their relationship, hers and Randall’s, bifurcated their growth, like a tree, into independent directions ignoring
the trunk that made it one; forgetting to meet at a glorious crown, joined and whole. Now she knows she cannot tell when her
husband of twenty-three years lost his respect for her. But that loss has weakened her.

“Honey, that losing yourself thing is strictly for your generation. I knew where I was all of the time.” Lulu chuckles. Picking
up the nozzle, she takes a bottle of aspirin from her pocket. The cap is one of those now old-fashioned, no-childproof tops.

“I need to make some changes. And Randall is a little… impatient.”

“I hope you’re not thinking about that photography business again.” The day Lena completed her acceptance paperwork for UCLA,
John Henry, checkbook in hand, and Lulu stood beside her prepared to pay her tuition on one condition: no photography. They
weren’t about to waste their hard-earned money on frivolity: college was about getting a good job, a nine-to-five-with-an-hour-for-lunch
job, a government job, a GS 12 or 15 job with a pension, vacation, and benefits.

“I
always
took care of my family first.” Lulu jiggles pills straight from the bottle into her mouth, then sips from the nozzle. “Women
have to put up with a man’s moodiness until it runs its course.”

“Maybe Bobbie should get her butt out here and benefit from some of this advice.” Her big sister always says Lena tells their
mother too much.

“It doesn’t apply… and, Bobbie thinks her books are more important than… anything else. Maybe if she listened, she could have
a husband, too.” Lulu holds on to the chair to stand fully upright. “You forget how lucky you are. You’re living the life
I dreamed for you…”