Notes from a Black Woman's Diary Read online

  Don’t you love the sound of her name? Emma mused. It rolls around the tongue like music. There should be shrines built to such a voice, Saint Lollie of the Golden Tones. Poppa, why are there no saintly distinctions for those who feed life with beauty? Are they not also the Saint Teresas of the world? When Lollie sings, I feel reverent, my heart cries aloud! Don’t laugh at your dear rational Em, I mean what I say. I swear to you that when Lollie was singing a biblical understanding gripped me in the center of my chest, I felt the world as a deep abiding place, myself as someone alive forever! Stop laughing, all of you, stop that indecent guffawing at my expense! And don’t make any of your boastful comments, R, about how black people carry around life’s soul, while white people feed off the crumbs. This is no ordinary white family you’ve dropped in on, and you’ve already stayed long enough to cut out the racial con games. Lollie can sing, whether or not her skin is a true part of the equation. She’s got a voice that grips the soul, a voice that makes me chilly and confused. I can feel it in my chest like the colors of the rainbow. And she laughed with a husky defiance that surprised all of us.

  I don’t like to hear you talk like that, Marsha said slowly, you never talk like that, you talk about law and order and justice, you talk about aiding and abetting the poor, about changing the system to include the defenseless and the weak. You never talk about God or rainbows. That woman hypnotized you, took away your concrete mind. Only Momma can talk that way and be full of truth. Lollie. I never heard of anybody called Lollie. It’s a suspicious-sounding name. I won’t be fooled by anyone called Lollie. Lollie. It scares me. Then she looked around as if she didn’t recognize us anymore. What’s happened? The spell is broken! What we had is gone gone gone! And she began to weep uncontrollably.

  Janice got up quickly to comfort her, folded her in her arms while we looked on, bewildered.

  Marsha saw the whole thing the moment Lollie stepped through the door. Saw it the way a child confronts danger and begs God to make it disappear, saw it the way Janice would have seen it if she’d spread out her cards, done a Celtic Cross on me. She would have seen the Tower cross my King of Swords, the World reversed, the Ten of Cups reversed, betrayal and disruption screaming out at us, while one earthbound spirit who could only be me retrenched deeper and deeper inside himself.

  ANDREW LETS JANICE SPEAK

  What is this, my chance to harangue? The rejected wife gets to have her say? You are too generous, with the kind and overbearing manners of a schmuck. You remember everything. No detail escapes that prurient mind of yours (I’ve picked up a few literary turns of the screw in all our years of cohabitational exile). It’s just like you to give me my say in this seemingly open gesture, like the good boy that you are, holding out your hands for a slap on the wrists.

  All right, let’s say I agree to play by the rules and make it a good story. After all, you’ve stolen many a tale from me, straight from the horse’s mouth. Most of it, of course, I’d sworn never to reveal, a psychiatrist’s brain being a storehouse of tales. But you had an uncanny way of wangling scraps and pieces, just enough to rebuild your always sinking dam of tales. I used to warn our friends, our enemies, whoever stopped at our table for an hour’s affectionate stroking. Watch out for Andrew, he’s all ears and antennae, don’t let slip any hint of private times or he’ll turn you into a story, an unexpected tale that mirrors all your flaws. I gave this warning indiscriminately to the thin and helpless, the sleek and well-fed, even to those disarming little waifs who straggled in behind the children. No stray soul was exempt from your literary designs, and ours was, as you surely remember, a house full of strays. The merest hint of distress, and we opened our doors wide, played Mother and Father Superior to the poor assembled. I wish to speak of only one such creature (knowing your just and generous spirit, you would, I’m sure, allow me to drift down any anecdotal stream, but I’m playing by the rules, a strict unflabby tale is my goal, as it has been yours every day of that horizontal life). R I feel compelled to speak about. R who arrived just as the seams in our well-knit little drama were about to come undone. Up until then I have to admit we were having a pretty good time, kept up a lively chorus, between ourselves and the children, that had all the markings of a good jazz combo. You played the inveterate straight man, a perfect foil for our foolishness, our comic bits. And I . . . I do feel the need to describe myself. After all, this piece is not a solo sung for you alone. I’m in it up to my ears, and this is how I see myself . . . a trim little piece with an edgy voice and a loud laugh—my outstanding trait. It was forever embarrassing you with its raucous overtones—too sexual, especially for a woman who did not give it up easily and who would have preferred not to have to give it up at all. The juicy needs of sex, all that slipping and sliding, fell on a deaf body and sent you tripping over your own stiff needs, until they fell into a kind of literary stupor, where food, wine, a crowded dialogue with children and other interesting strays, dulled your true desire to get some. Not that you didn’t eventually do that. That is, after all, what we’re coming to. The whole point of this leaden tale is all about your finally getting some and ripping apart the seams of that easy rhythm we were dancing to.

  But don’t rush me. It was, as I was saying, a cozy little scene with ample room for each of our insanities: your sullen need to stroke out the perfect tale, my vulgar foraging around in other people’s insides, our children’s happy coddling of themselves and others inside that soft, indulgent atmosphere. To say that we were sacredly vulgar, not only with each other but with the strangers who crossed our doorstep, is a truly fine way of putting it. It characterizes to perfection that careless mix of lazy but welcoming vibes that attracted so many odd souls to our door.

  Something like that. Some vibrant metaphor. I leave it in your hands to shape and polish. I do the rough draft, you do the polishing. It was the basis of our whole act, a kind of sloppy teamwork we settled on early in the game. Whenever your mother came (speaking of sloppy souls), I used to play advance man for your act. I’d meet her at the train station (you didn’t drive, which was also your excuse for not accompanying me). Just as I’d flung my arms wide, begun the role of exuberant daughter-in-law, she’d brush past me, fasten herself to the nearest porter. I’m looking for someone they call my daughter-in-law, I’d hear her say. I have no memory for faces, all I’ve been told is hearsay, my son says she’s Jewish, I have no idea what Jews look like. Can you point her out to me? Gritting my teeth, I’d advance upon her. Momma, what a pleasure to have found you! Who is this woman? she’d ask the porter. She acts as if she knows me, yet nowhere in my pictures have I ever snapped that face. I’ve cut my hair! I’d shout. It must be difficult to recognize a daughter-in-law who’s changed her style, but wait, I’ll show you my picture, taken last month when Roberto turned six! Then I’d slip out the photograph, move her surreptitiously forward under the porter’s watchful gaze. Look at Roberto, Momma, look how he’s grown! Surely your grandson remains a visual speck on that otherwise blurred landscape! And I’d shove her in the car and take off in a flash.

  The children would come flying out to greet her. Momma Em, our grandma, flesh of Poppa’s flesh, spirit of his spirit! They were smart little elves, always reaching out to touch the core of our lives—insinuating their way down to the bottoms of our souls. In Heaven they must have made the connection that landed us together. Who are these people? your mother would shout. Where am I? You’re at my house, Momma, you’d say, and laugh with exasperation, and try to move her memory forward beyond the day you left home. Only on occasion did she relent, agree to recognize you as her son. Then she’d gather the children about her, beginning some bewildering saga that took up most of the day. What a shiksa she was with her tales—flitting from one story to the next like a schizophrenic queen! All your stories come straight from your mother’s breast, she weaned you forever on her queer imagination.

  Enough already. I sound just like her, her Yiddish confusion has settled on my tongue. I no longer know who
I am. It’s your hovering that’s done me in. When it’s time to say good-bye it’s time to say good-bye, crooned R in one of his many tributes to our lost vulgarity and joy. Oh, he could croon! Flatten himself to the keys, his fingers flying up and down! He had the bold flamboyance of a good emcee, the cool silver voice of Billy Eckstine, the homeless behavior of a rejected child. Perfect grist for my psychological mill is precisely how you put it (and as you well know, I did apply my very considerable skill on his behalf).

  In truth, I was the family magician. Past present future wove a full and easy tapestry before my eyes. I could see (as you well know the gift has diminished, the trauma of your roaming shut down my sight). The children were quite proud of this and brought me many clients, poor diminished souls without a future or a past. Ask my momma what’s in store, Marsha would say, she’ll tell you everything. Speak to them. Momma, pass your hand across their faces and tell them what you see. Then she’d imitate me, lift her childish hands and make a circle. Oh, Momma, one day she shouted, I can see, too! There’s nothing good ahead for him, he’ll be dead before winter! Oh my God, Momma, I see his stiff body blowing in the breeze! And she screamed with all her might, ran from the room in a fit of terror, promised with all her heart and soul never again to imitate me. Roberto ignored my powers until late in the game (he’s truly your son, a skeptical soul, gullible to a fault only when his own needs are involved). Enough already that you sniff around daily in people’s insides, he’d say, why add insult to injury with psychic vibrations! But when he reached the age of macho charisma, and pretty young women camped outside our door, he’d slip into our bed in the middle of the night. Tell me, Momma, which one really loves me, which one only wants this stiff thing between my legs. I’m confused, Momma, love and romance are too much a mystery, open my eyes, Momma, so I can see.

  Emma, of course, found all this amusing. Her wry sense of humor thrived on that sort of thing. As the least whimsical sibling, she’d made a definite decision to be contrary, as contrary as contrary can be. Never agree with whatever conclusion. Face life with defiance, an improbable stance. Everything must add up, Momma, she’d reproach me, your psychic contortions are pure energy flow. It’s all math and science, don’t think you’re a priestess. From any point on a circle life is always the same. Remember that, Momma, don’t let all these predictions go to your head, I won’t have you thinking you stand out in a crowd. Emma, our Emma, the great leveler of the clan. Only she rebuked you and your sedentary ways. Why doesn’t Poppa go out like other fathers, why this silly obsession with words on a page? And she’d give you the finger (a vulgar gesture, I agree, but who counted symbols when love was falling from trees?).

  One day I said to you, You’re about to get some! I see you riding some female body like a stallion in heat! And a vision of you romping and frolicking in bed danced before my eyes! You shrugged, grinned with slight indulgence as if the whole thing were really no concern of yours. That’s your reaction when I tell you your future! You don’t deserve to have a thing happen to you! And what about me? I wondered. Where will I be while you’re screwing around? I turned on the camera in search of some picture that would show me myself. Nothing. A fog. Oh God, I’ve got no future. I’ll be left alone, discarded and blurred!

  Just then R arrives and the melody moves forward. He’s been to an audition. How did it go, R? we ask. Do not ask needless questions, he says, and sighs, no one recognized me. I wish I could get R’s way of speaking right (there I could use a little of your literary assistance, your writer’s penchant for faking the truth). R talks like a musical grammarian, as if before there were words there were semicolons and commas, a whole army of punctuation that is more important. He’s always looking for pauses, the brief hiatus where words hang. It’s not surprising that what strikes you is not what he says. It all has a similar picky phraseology that doesn’t ring true. What you watch in order to get at R is his expression, the appalling look of dismay that lives on his face.

  For R is a black man (technically speaking he’s a medium shade of brown). Cultural information of a more specific nature (whether he grew up on the block or in some elite suburb) is hard to come by. Where he’d been, what he’d been doing up until the day he knocked on our door, remains one of those mysteries time has refused to help solve. He referred to no one. No hardworking mother, no devoted aunt, no father. When questioned acutely as Emma was wont to do, he’d retreat into one chosen line, I’m without hindrance, and shut his mouth. That’s ridiculous, Emma would counter, no one alive is unobstructed, the past is a shackle always pulling one down (she was in her “psychological” phase, toying on and off with the idea of following in her mother’s magical footsteps)!

  Even I have difficulties with R’s seeming amnesia. From a psychiatric perspective it’s an untenable position, not to mention the literary dead end it creates. What’s a character without a past? Even if you were convinced that in those months and months of unorthodox analysis I unearthed a gold mine of family secrets that I kept to myself. Often at the dinner table you’d put out your customary feelers: How was Madame X? Was Señor Y feeling potent again? I’d throw out my usual tidbits, an evasive line about a new client’s virginity, some bit of hilarity to get you off the track. But you kept right on sniffing, just as if you could smell R directly under my skin. One time I tried to fool you, made up a whole history for him on the spot: he grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in the Clinton Street Projects, a rough neighborhood knee-deep in poverty and dope. Then he went to some school of music and art, where his talents were refined, his sensibility appreciated, and he left Newark behind biting the proverbial dust. There was some disruption in his family. Murder. Suicide. Both are events he witnessed before the age of nine. There’s a sister, too, the connection is incestuous, but I haven’t pinned that down yet, it’s just a guess.

  Then I sat back on my laurels. You took a few puffs on your pipe. You think that half-baked tale can slip by me? That’s the kind of shit colored people repeat, they know full well whites want a rags-to-riches saga, or some rags-to-riches bullshit full of incest and dope. Stop this coy narrative bullshit (you have the foulest mouth in the whole of the Jewish kingdom) and hand over the real story!

  Boy, did that make me giddy! I had you eating out of my hands for a few measly words! Look at your father, children, I shouted, the dope would kill for a brand-new tale! I was all but collapsed in a fit of weeping laughter.

  All right already, since this is my final resting place in your memory it’s not fair to withhold all the goodies from you. And I agree, the tête-à-têtes between R and myself are full of juicy tidbits that would make a ripe addition to your storehouse of tales. So I’ll give you a sample hour between R and myself . . . I’M SITTING BEHIND MY DESK AT THE END OF THE DAY (the capitals are like stage directions—it’s not so different, the analytical hour from a one-act play). R ARRIVES IN TRENCH COAT AND FRENCH BERET (he is full of symbolic clothing—vests, hats, baggy trousers—affirmations of another era, where he felt he belonged). HE TAKES OFF HIS FRENCH BERET, SMOOTHES HIS HAIR DOWN TO EXAGGERATED SLEEKNESS. HE IS NOT EXACTLY HANDSOME. HIS FACE IS TOO ANXIOUS. THERE IS A CAREFUL, ALMOST TOO-MANNERED QUALITY ABOUT HIM. HE IS CAUTIOUS TO A FAULT. AND THIS DETRACTS FROM HIS MASCULINITY. HE REFUSES THE CHAIR MOST PATIENTS READILY GOBBLE UP; WHEN I OFFER HIM A FULL-BLOWN COUCH HE LAUGHS WITH DERISION (that is too much a cliché for his intelligent despair). INSTEAD HE PACES RHYTHMICALLY, TO AND FRO, TO SOME MELODY HE’S REHEARSING THAT SOOTHES HIS NERVOUS PAIN. JANICE (that’s me): Sit down, R, there’s no need for all this pacing. (Forgive the sterile lines, psychiatrists have no flair for words.) R: You ask me to do what everybody else does, come in here and sit like a lump on a log? HE SHAKES HIS HEAD DOGGEDLY, KEEPS MOVING BACK AND FORTH WITH RHYTHMIC UNEASE. JANICE: All right, have it your way. But today I insist you talk about your past. Anything. However insignificant. Why don’t we begin with your mother? (Oh God, the banalities of the psychiatric trade!) R CRACKS UP. SLAPS HIS THIGH LIKE A DRUMMER HITTING T
HE CYMBALS. MAKES A LONG WRY FACE, HIS EYES DROOPING LIKE A DOG’S. JANICE: Stop it, R, who taught you to make such a down face? R PULLS AT HIS EYES. MAKES THEM DROOP EVEN FARTHER. JANICE ERUPTS WITH LAUGHTER. JANICE (CONVULSING): Stop it, R. I’m splitting a gasket, that’s a nasty trick to make me lose control! R SHOVES OUT HIS LOWER LIP. BEGINS SCRATCHING AND BARKING LIKE HE’S CLIMBING A TREE.

  JANICE HOWLS AND RISES FROM HER SEAT. JANICE (JOINING IN THE MERRIMENT): Let me show you my duck walk, R. SHE BEGINS TO WADDLE AND CLUCK. JANICE (WADDLING): Can you do the Stubby? R (STILL CLIMBING): What’s that? JANICE (CLUCKING): I never met a black person who hadn’t heard about the Stubby! R (GROWING WARY): You’re looking for a soft spot, some Negro place of entry. JANICE (IGNORING HIS WARINESS): This is how it begins, snap, two-three-four, and snap, two-three-four, and snap snap, three-four, and snap snap, three-four. SHE BEGINS TO SLIP AND SLIDE AROUND THE ROOM. AN INFECTIOUS FLOW THAT GRABS R BY THE BALLS. JANICE (ENGULFED): Sweet! Oh, how sweet! If only we could remember to live by the beat! R (CRACKING UP): No ideas, please, don’t make it heavy with ideas. HE SHIFTS INTO HIS OWN FINGER-POPPING SLIDE. R: Let’s break out of this fey four/four shit, kick the beat back to a sweeter place. Ba ba-ba, ba-ba ba! Ba ba-ba, ba-ba ba! Kick that beat back! AND HE DRIFTS THEM FORWARD, ADDING SWEETER SYNCOPATION TO THE WAY THEY MOVE. THEY ARE BOTH CAUGHT UP IN THE RISE AND FALL. (I know by now you are writhing in your writer’s grave. I hear every objection: What? No words? No soiled confessions? You mean all that transpired was this hippie vibes-and-rhythm shit? Fuck!)

  The truth is it took R a long time to warm up. Walking into my office was no easy sit-down-and-get-on-with-it affair. R played it like a good musician, insisted on a careful warm-up, a prelude, if you will. By this time we both might be high as kites. R had the capacity to make me truly giddy, I’d break out in raucous giggles, begin to spill the beans, until my own freaky childhood got played on the strings. Generally, I keep a tight lid on my past (unwilling to wind up in one of your cerebral stories). But R and I made a pact to spill everything. He confessed he lived only to screw, the fleshy contact being his only source of relief. R placed in his dick his only hope of salvation, kept it active, stroked it daily, allowed women to lead it directly to the source. Once there he drank deeply until he cried aloud and drowned all his tears. Everything else was pure anxiety, he was scared out of his wits. I understood how he felt. My own childhood memories pulled bitter strings. I confessed my craving for a lively song and dance. Not sex. God forbid I should ever be nibbled on like a piece of meat! But I had to have action, things spinning around me, people clowning for attention with me at the center (I’m the one who kept our house in an uproar, you merely profited from the multitudes I drew). I gave him my one and only home movie: me in bed with my brother, who alone, I confessed, was allowed a real nibbling. I let him eat away at my flesh to stifle my sobs. It was by no means your orthodox fifty-minute hour.