The Gilda Stories (31 page)

Effie's mouth and hands were tender, insistent—demanding Gilda's pleasure be allowed its own way. Gilda enjoyed the sensation of yielding. She let go of worry about Samuel, of thoughts about Bird, and of desire she carried from the past. When she felt the welling of heat inside her she knew the release would be greater than any she had known before and she opened her eyes to catch Effie's gaze. The intent blazed inside the darkness of Effie's face. Her gentle rocking escalated, enveloping them both in a web of sensation. At the final moment Gilda closed her eyes, drawing inside herself as the power of her desire erupted around them. The air seemed to fill with the weight of them, humid movement on their skin. Gilda squeezed her eyes shut, listening to their breathing until it slowed and became almost imperceptible. She looked again at Effie and marveled at the flecks of orange swirling in her eyes.

They watched each other until the orange faded to brown. Effie let her head rest on Gilda's shoulder as she said, “We'll talk of Samuel tomorrow.”

Gilda wasn't surprised or upset to hear her thoughts verbalized by Effie; the fact of their union rested on her as easily as Effie's slim body. She closed her eyes and listened outward beyond the locked door of her room, past the apartment walls. The building, the street, seemed as they should—quiet sounds of night. Gilda let her arms enfold Effie, comfortable in the complete blackness of her locked room, the morning light kept safely at bay.

The following afternoon Gilda showed Effie the trick of light that Julius had created by painting her windows. Effie watched distractedly, then said, “I think you should leave here for a while. What you've told me of Anthony's assessment seems logical. And what I've sensed of Samuel himself, following you, listening to you as he's been doing these past weeks, fits. But I believe he's more unpredictable than any of us can trust.”

Gilda felt anxiety rise within her again, but part of it was anger at Samuel for his intrusion into her life here, for his part in Eleanor's death.

“If Eleanor was willing to give Samuel the opportunity to learn to live our life, perhaps you will too.” Effie's voice deepened with the years of living. Gilda heard the age in her gentle firmness as she continued, “It's Sorel who can help him, Sorel whom he must see. You are only a convenient obstacle. I suggest you remove yourself.”

Gilda felt an unfocused panic rise inside of her—she had finally made a home here with those she loved around her. “In spite of all I've learned I'm not much of a traveler….”

“Then you needn't travel. Simply move your residence. Come north with me to my home in New Hampshire,” Effie said. “It's quiet, the land is lovely, there are many things to learn there.”

“Why should I run away from my home, my family, for Samuel's sake?” Gilda said, thinking of how much she'd been anticipating Julius' and Sorel's return.

“I'd not thought of it as running away. Movement is life for us. You've been trying to make a life for yourself. I've felt it in everything you ever said. But this can't happen with Ayeesha and the others, unless it is one of them you wish to bring into your life?”

Gilda barely shook her head. Her brow furrowed as she spoke. “One would think that our life would make such decisions easy. But I look into their faces, and no answer comes to me. Or the answer is no. I can never be certain so I back away, come close again, then retreat. I keep hoping to see the need for this life in their eyes as I did with Julius. But it seems their needs are bigger than the simplicity of longevity.”

“It's that simplicity that seems to make you stumble. You are looking too hard.” Effie continued in a strong voice. “You insist upon seeking guidance. Let me be a guide for a while. Follow me.”

Gilda was silent, thinking of the reasons this might be impossible—Bird, Julius. Effie continued as if the sound of her words themselves would be convincing. “Long ago I searched for others, terrified I would find them, terrified I would not. I had been brought to Greece and sold as a trinket, given as a gift. The woman who was my mistress barely saw me except when showing me off to her friends.”

A thread of bitterness ran through the words in spite of the placid expression on Effie's face. “I'm sure she grieved—as if she'd lost her favorite piece of jewelry—when I was stolen away by the one who gave me this life. But I was not as fortunate as some: he was neither kind nor intelligent. He used me simply to slake his own thirst, possibly not even realizing that the hunger began to grow in me. When he feared that my color made him too conspicuous, he abandoned me with little thought, on an island in the Aegean. But I was befriended there and taught to moderate my hunger, to live among people until I had the courage to move about the world. I've been among many of our people in all the places we can be found. Encountering Ayeesha and her friends when I first came to this country was a great joy to me. They reconnected me to a part of myself I'd never fully known. Learning of Sorel and you gave me even greater pleasure.”

Effie smiled at Gilda's look of surprise. “Of course I know of Sorel, as I am certain he must know of me. Not my name, but that I've been living within the City. I've found that information travels very quickly among us. Although he's been away from his establishment he must certainly be aware of my presence, just as he is of Samuel's.”

Effie could feel the resistance begin to melt away from Gilda, but she also sensed the deeper concerns that must be addressed. She spoke only after giving Gilda time to let the concerns take shape.

“It's not an unkind thing to make a new home. And it will be one where all whom you love are welcomed. When you sing, I listen to your thoughts. The words and music are an engaging tide, but beneath them always are the people I could know only through you—Bird, Julius, Anthony.

“The first time we met I knew you were not a simple mortal as you pretended.” Effie's face looked briefly like a girl's. “In the lands and times in which I've lived, searching the minds of others has not been as remote a possibility as it seems today, particularly in this country. That's why my thoughts are shielded as a matter of course. I let down my own guard only when you sing for us, or on the nights I've stood hidden in the backs of clubs where you performed so I might learn more of you.”

“But why didn't you make yourself known to me or Anthony? Why were you hiding?”

“I need only make my presence known directly to Sorel. He is the only elder here.” Again the years of experience rang in her voice. Gilda sensed an understanding of the traditions of their life deeper than she herself had known.

Effie continued. “I've traveled to many countries and not remained for any length of time. The home I've prepared to the north, in New Hampshire, is private, safe, yet not very far from the cities. And surely Sorel and the others might come to you there.”

Effie was surprised at the continued resistance. “You don't see it, do you?”

She sat back and looked around the room, then again at Gilda before going on. “Our lives must change with the change in mortals. That's the nature of our lives. We move among them, but we can never be of them. The cities and the principles on which most societies are built have been poisoned. While this is of great concern to us, we have to remain apart to protect ourselves, to protect them. We must all make safe places. I'm not suggesting we abandon them—our lives are inextricably bound together. But a broader view of what our place in this world will be is sorely needed.”

Gilda felt uncertain. The world was just coming into focus for her; she couldn't visualize change in the future as Effie did. Each new era had somehow slipped in around her and she'd adapted to it rather than thinking of herself as separate from it, part of another line of history.

“I would like to see this land, your home there,” Gilda said, almost surprising herself. “But Sorel's homecoming, we'd have to return for that…” Gilda stopped before adding that she needed to hear from Bird before making such a move. She realized that she needn't consult with anyone. Bird would know of this move as she knew of everything. Looking at the rich color of Effie's dark skin and the complex texture of her hair pulled tightly into a braid at the back of her head, Gilda sensed the familiarity that had made her so attractive from the beginning. She was both plain and luminous, young and old, contrasts that embodied all of what their world was supposed to mean. The contradiction of who she was—both living and not living—shone through in her.

“And Samuel, what of him?” Gilda asked.

“That's a matter for him and Sorel to sort through. Its outcome has been settled already, at least existentially. It only remains for Sorel to return and put it into motion.”

Gilda tried to puzzle out the ripple of feelings that moved through her like a shifting tide. Clearly Julius had found his place in this world much more easily than she. His eye was ever on the horizon although he was as loyal to Gilda as anyone could hope for. He, like Bird, had easily altered the rhythm of life to fit himself, not the limitations of mortal time.

Gilda sang her new song at the going-away party that Ayeesha held for Effie.

The words grew big in her heart and spilled out onto the bright faces of Kaaren, Marianne, Cynthia, Laverne, others. She let her mind open with the song, and Effie listened to her thoughts. The regret they both felt in separating from the women who hovered around them now blended. But rather than being multiplied, it was countered by their anticipation. Gilda remembered other times she had taken leave of newly made friends and for once felt no sadness. Their lives went on within the cycle that was their nature. As Julius had become her brother, Effie would be her sister. For the first time the years ahead seemed rightfully hers.

Gilda dropped the receiver into its cradle. The crash was impersonal, final. She turned the power of the video monitor back and pressed replay in order to see the tape she had made of the national magazine show. Gilda stabbed at the pause button. There she was in full color. Although she was shrouded in a straw hat and glasses, it was all too clearly her image. For the past two days her literary agent had left word that he was in a meeting, and she'd had nowhere to vent her anger at this voyeuristic intrusion into her privacy.

She punched out again, this time releasing the pause button. There was another photograph of her, annoyingly recognizable, obviously taken when she was unaware of it. The room was filled with the silky voice of the announcer who seemed to relish describing Abby Bird, Gilda's literary alter ego, as “mysterious” and “reclusive.” These were not, after all, capital crimes. And then that phrase again—“fetishistic flight from publicity.”

He called her the nation's most popular author of romance novels. She could hear him thinking both
how quaint
and
how lurid
although he said neither. Gilda had chosen that particular genre because it was one of the few forms of written literature the populace still followed. Newspapers and magazines had been relegated to the nostalgia bins since the
New York Times
folded in 2010. And few people could remember when they had actually held one of the literary classics in their hands. She'd also chosen the field because of its anonymity and the not uncommon practice of using pen names. This magazine show with its spotlight on Abby Bird was only the first, she was certain, in a relentless series of assaults on her life.

Writing romances was, for Gilda, a way of sharing some of the many stories she had gathered through her long life, much as song-writing had been. The journals she'd treasured for years and the lessons they held had become a fine field to harvest for characters and ideas. To many, the stories she wrote seemed curious, archaic, even though the periods in which they were set were rarely more than 150 years old. Having conspired to forget their past, the generations plowed ahead at top speed to some mythical future as if the wild west existed in the stars. Gilda had written the stories of their history, cloaking it in adventure and mysticism, and they sold.

Until this moment it had been simple. Ten years ago she had easily used her silent powers to convince an agent to represent her and a publisher to buy her series of adventures. They never saw her face to face, and as social systems slowly unraveled, her reclusiveness was not worthy of particular note. Abby Bird's books made money, encouraging the publisher to accept her insistence on complete privacy.

Effie had first become addicted to the stories and persuaded Gilda to market them. Even when she was there, listening to the click of keys from Gilda's workroom, Effie had to keep reminding herself that it was
her
Gilda writing them, not some other person named Abby Bird. Their success had eased Effie's mind. Gilda showed no signs of dissatisfaction with her life in the small town. For her, the stories were an urgent message—a way of speaking with thousands of people in distant places, places she had been to or hoped to visit in the future. She insinuated herself into their homes and their thoughts, and they welcomed her. It was also a way of keeping contact with the changing world outside Hampton Falls.

When Gilda began writing she settled in for a long stay. It was from her electronic enclave that she communicated, writing books and letters on paper, and communiqués on video, to almost as many people as read her books.

Hampton Falls was perched precariously over the ocean between Massachusetts and Maine. Most of the population of about a thousand citizens traced their lineage in the town back two hundred years. Much of the yearly tourism had declined to almost nothing because the coastline was so polluted. The people who remembered the fishing industry sat around talking about it to each other. Those too young to remember left town as soon as they could. The village had shifted slightly with Gilda's arrival, making a small place for her in their social lives, but they still considered her and Effie strangers.

To the fans with whom Abby Bird communicated, however, she was no stranger. Many read every book she wrote; others simply sent her letters.

Gilda kept up with her family. Bird, whose name she had taken for part of her pseudonym, still wrote in a distinctive script on paper mailed in vellum envelopes covered with foreign stamps. Bird's letters were often brief. Perhaps the elusiveness of such contact was painful. She reported things: the status of the current Native leadership, the secrets of Belgian lacemakers, archaeological finds in Peru. Each item of information held an urgency that implied all things were connected. Often she wrote announcing a visit in a letter that would arrive by post, weeks after she had already come and gone on her way again.

Effie was fond of sending clippings, song lyrics, leaves, shells when she was traveling, any artifacts she found on hand, sometimes even interesting labels from new clothing. She habitually sent a separate package for herself so that when she returned home she, too, had a gift to open.

Sorel and Anthony were unpredictable. Sometimes huge scrolls would arrive, filled with flowery script—formal epistles recounting their adventures, inquiring about hers, discussing philosophical questions. At other times tapes would be broadcast on their mail channel, frequently staged like a video program: Sorel interviewing Anthony or vice versa, or the two of them engaged in debate. They almost never presented themselves live on video. Sorel felt that it was ill-mannered and crude.

Julius was a communiqué buff. Each fortnight, without fail, his signal would ring like a secret knock. Gilda would tune into the video, and there would be his shining face on tape, or sometimes live from a place she would never have predicted.

But the novels were the real joy. They helped her find new people with whom to communicate. One young black woman in particular, Nadine, a nascent fiction writer in St. Louis, wrote by post regularly. When Gilda received the first letter her hand trembled with recognition of the penmanship. The sense of the envelope itself told her who it was from: Aurelia's great-granddaughter. Although she had known of her, had followed her with her thoughts, she had not expected to really communicate with her. She'd been aware of all of Aurelia's progeny yet had studiously avoided any direct contact. Aurelia's daughter had continued to live in Missouri, near her mother, until marrying late in life. In turn, her daughter and granddaughter were raised in Arkansas.

Aurelia's great-granddaughter, Nadine, had been deaf since birth and had an uncanny sense of language—how words felt inside rather than how they sounded. Her handwriting and her sense of humor were much like Aurelia's had been. She sent Gilda embroidered tales full of the news of her city and her rich yet isolated life. Although she had not yet had the courage to show them to anyone else, she sometimes included one of her stories. She wrote of a future she would never know. An idealistic world of utopian equality and mystical adventure.

Through Nadine's letters Gilda had enjoyed tales of Aurelia's successes. She spoke with passionate admiration for her great-grandmother's activism, a tradition she was trying to carry on in her own town. Municipal resources seemed to have been depleted to a level not much higher than that of Aurelia's community when Gilda lived there.

Gilda always wrote back to Nadine, spending hours over the letters, afraid to reveal too much of herself but cherishing each word. Nadine's was a name Gilda remembered as she lay down to rest in the pink morning hours.

Because Nadine communicated on paper only, never using the videophone, Gilda remained satisfied trying to picture Nadine in her house or walking about her neighborhood. It was difficult because much had changed in the world since Gilda moved to Effie's New Hampshire retreat. The economy had taken a sharp downturn. The health of the cities had failed. Many people had abandoned the sterile concrete canyons for hills and valleys they thought would provide fresh air and water. Many had starved there, unable to read the weather or rotate crops. Some died at the hands of those trying to drive them away from their already overburdened land. Much had changed.

Still Gilda's hair was not really grey nor her face lined. When she looked into the mirror her familiar image formed easily, reminding her of what the Fulani people had always known: the spirit was just that—an intangible thing that did not die with the body. Her essence as an African still shone through her soft, wide features.

She saw not just herself but a long line of others who had become part of her as time passed. The family she had hungered for as a child was hers now. It was spread across the globe but was closer to her than she had ever imagined possible. She felt comfortable with most of her life on the New Hampshire coast: some of the few remaining forested areas were not too far to the north, and the movement of the ocean, with all its discomforts, still intrigued her. With so many people retreating from the fouled coasts, Gilda's taking up residence in the woodlands of New Hampshire assured her privacy. And when those in her family wanted to rest from their travels, she had the accommodations to welcome everyone.

She smiled at the old memory of Effie using that possibility as an enticement to move north. The first years there had been tentative, each of them spending as much time elsewhere as in the rambling cottage set into a secluded hillside. Little by little Gilda had moved things from her apartment in the City to the house. It was almost two years before she brought her trunk. The carefully tended quilt now lay across the back of a chair that sat facing the fireplace. She stopped wondering if she would ever bring a partner into this life herself, as Bird had been brought in. Instead she focused on all that Effie wanted to learn about blacks in America, about Gilda's past, and on her writing.

Effie had outfitted Gilda with a full wardrobe for the outdoors woman: flannel shirts, hiking boots, rain gear. Together they'd observed the subtle yet sinister changes in the world around them. The frequent coastal storms were not the least of them, and Gilda's bright yellow slicker and gum boots were put to use more often than she would have expected. Still the home they had made remained quiet, and the town in which they lived was primarily unchanged. Again Gilda played the eccentric for the townspeople as she had in Rosebud. But she did not regret her move. Although she returned to the City frequently she was always eager to sink into the chair before the fire.

That was all now at risk. Gilda started at the tinkling sound of the videophone. Could the press be after her so soon? But then she recognized Julius' coded rings. She turned from her desk to the console and pressed the buttons, cautiously leaving the shadow screen on from her side.

“Well, sisterlove. Are you practicing your autograph?” Julius' freckled brown face was split by a glowing smile, then uproarious laughter.

“You saw the show?” Gilda said, flipping the view button.

“Sister, everybody in the Americas saw the show. You still don't have any idea how much your fans dig you. Girl, you're like a celeb -get it?”

Gilda couldn't suppress her own smile. Julius had managed to hold on to his natural flair for using black slang in spite of now speaking at least twenty languages and having lived in almost as many different countries. His short Afro haircut, fierce devotion, and colorful vocabulary had remained unchanged for over fifty years.

The first time Julius had come to visit her at the cottage he'd teased her relentlessly. The idea of Gilda living in the woods and wearing hiking boots seemed too anachronistic even for him. Gilda had let him tease, releasing all his anxiety about the change, making him understand he still had a place where she was. In creating that understanding with Julius, she had come to accept the manner in which Bird led
her
life.

“Listen, Julius, I know you find this amusing, but this is dangerous for us. I've been safe here. We've all been able to be safe at the cottage. What happens when the paparazzi start trying to track me down for exclusive interviews and all that madness? I don't think we can risk a TV documentary!”

“Hey, how's this?—‘Lifestyles of the Undead!' ” Julius kept laughing but tried to continue. “You in a Borsalino hat and dark glasses, interviewer trailing behind nervously, conduct a tour of the house… and grounds.” This last bent him over with mirth, and his face disappeared from the screen.

“Julius, please listen. You don't seem to hear the seriousness of this. If they find me they won't stop until they know everything. Muckraking is like a disease. Anything to keep from paying attention to real problems. We are slowly poisoning ourselves to death, and I bet this story about me could beat that one into the top of the show on any of the networks.”

When Gilda left the City she had removed herself from Samuel's potential violence, but that was only escape from an individual. She stopped collecting newspaper articles about the bombings, rapes, and starvation, and the ease of her disconnection now weighed upon her like the rocks on which the cottage stood. For decades she had watched history on the video—marches, movements, more bombings, rapes, killings, more movements. This place had always seemed safe. She couldn't believe that Julius was taking it so lightly.

His face reappeared, and he tried to calm down. '‘Listen, Gilda, I get your drift. But you been holding down the fort so long, sister-love, you forgot about the outer limits. I mean the world does exist beyond your property line, ya dig? I mean, like right now I'm in Iowa. You think you got problems? Citizens here are still trying to decide if brown people and white people should eat sitting at the same table. Which is pretty funny since there ain't that much food to speak of. The GrassRoots Coalition is having trouble organizing the people into any type of protests. You and me—we're lucky. We can't ever forget our dependence on this earth. They don't have that insight. It's a serious joint, and they're just starting to cop to it. We been practicing for—shall we say—a while. It's a hard row to hoe, all the way around, doll.”