Third Girl from the Left (29 page)

“What was your daddy like?”

“My daddy?”

“Yeah. What was he like?”

“Well . . . , I guess he was a good man. He loved us. That's for sure. He was the only black pharmacist in town—that was a big deal. He had to go to school for a long time. We had some money compared to a lot of people. He really liked people. He liked to tell us funny stories about people who came in the store. And he knew everything about everybody in town. You know, the man who sells you your drugs is gonna know you pretty well.” She laughed. “He loved my mama too. But . . .”

“But what?”

“But nothing. Turn that thing off, Tam. We oughta go help Jolene.” She stood up, done in that way I knew so well. It was the same way she was done when I'd ask about my father, who he was or where he was. The same way she was done when Hilda Diaz said that I was living with a couple of dykes, and I came home and asked, What's that mean? The same way she was done when I was sixteen and we had a fight over me staying out too late and I screamed that she had never really been an actress anyway, just a glorified extra who couldn't even hold down a job in the business. Her eyes shut like doors, her body a stone. She was done.

I
DIDN'T KNOW ANY OLD PEOPLE. IN LA, SIGNS OF
aging are greeted with the same enthusiasm as signs of cancer. My mother and Sheila were true LA girls on that front. They coveted plastic surgery but couldn't afford it. Instead every kind of anti-aging cream, potion, or capsule available lined the edge of the bathtub, filled the medicine cabinet, sat out on the kitchen counter. In New York, especially as a recent film student, you were utterly in the country of the young and strong and able. You had to be able to run, to hoist, to manage without much food or money, to scramble. Your willingness had to be enormous, your will titanic. You had to be sturdy and self-involved. So I found my grandmother a little frightening at first.

She was quiet and slept a lot in those first few days. She didn't seem to be in much pain. She was on a lot of medication, I suppose. My mother and Aunt Jolene took turns caring for her, my mother leaving most of the dirty jobs for her sister. My stolid, quiet uncle, Otis, who I don't believe I had heard say more than ten words, appeared periodically with a dish his wife had made and helped with the heavy lifting, moving furniture as needed, that kind of thing. I hung around, relatively useless. I shot a lot of stuff, kind of randomly. Something was forming in my mind.

After the third day, Aunt Jolene came out of my grandmother's room as I lay on the sofa, my shorts-clad legs sticking to it. I was reading an article about lighting techniques in a back issue of
Filmmaker
when Aunt Jolene said, “She asked to talk to you. Go sit with her while she has her lunch.”

“She wants to talk to me?”

“Yes. Asked for you particular. Go on now.” She looked at me severely. “It ain't like you've been so doggone busy around here.”

Sheepishly, I closed my magazine. “Well, I came because Mama asked me to. I haven't . . . I don't have a place here.”

Aunt Jolene's face softened. “Sure you do. Go on in there and talk to your grandma.”

So I went. She was propped up on a lot of pillows with frilly pillowcases. She balanced a plate with a lot of softish foods on a tray on her lap. There was a chair near the head of the bed and a television, muted now, at the foot. I sat in the chair. “Hi . . . , Grandma.”

“Hello, child. Tamara, right?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Where'd that come from? Was I channeling old viewings of
Steel Magnolias
?

“I swear, it's getting harder and harder to remember things. Tamara. I'ma try real hard to remember that, but if I forget, you go right ahead and remind me, all right? I've had to keep a lot of names in my head over the years. A lot of names.” She trailed off, then seemed to focus again. “I'm mighty glad you come to see me, Tamara. I never did think I'd get to meet you, and I always wondered what you was like. Your mama . . .” She paused, swallowed hard. “Your mama was always hardheaded. Grew up into a hardheaded woman. I couldn't tell her nothing.”

“She's still kind of like that, Grandma.”

She laughed loudly. So loudly that I couldn't help but laugh too. “Well, I guess folks don't change all that much, do they? You strike me as being a little bit hardheaded yourself.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

We fell into an awkward silence, until I spoke. “What was she like when she was little?”

“Who, child?”

“Mama?”

“Your mama?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Well, she was about the prettiest thing you ever did see. Everybody thought so. Couldn't keep her hair together for nothing, when she was little. Knees always dirty. But she was so pretty. That was her downfall, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was so pretty, the boys started coming around. She started getting all fast. I couldn't have that. I . . . I was sorry about it later. Always sorry about it. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “What's done is done.”

Ain't been no boys coming around for a while now
, I thought. But I didn't want to completely freak out an old woman I'd just met. So I remained silent. Then I surprised myself. “Grandma, would you mind if I came in again with my camera? If we talked and I filmed our talks?”

“I seen you with that thing when I came home. You like to use that thing? Take pictures of folks?”

“Yes, ma'am, I do.”

“Well, I guess that'd be all right. Though I don't know why you'd want to take pictures of me.”

“It's not regular pictures, Grandma. It's movies. It's a movie camera. I saved up and went to graduate school to learn how to make movies.” I didn't say “films” as we always did at NYU. Somehow, I knew that to her they were ever and always movies.

“You know how to make movies?” she said. Her voice rose with real excitement.

“Yes, ma'am. I really like doing it.”

“Well, I never. A black girl making movies. I never thought I'd see such a thing. I love the pictures. Your mama ever tell you that? We used to go every Saturday, rain or shine, no matter what. We saw everything. You ask her.” She stopped again briefly. “Whenever we wasn't fighting, we was at the pictures. We saw everything. Ask her about that
Carmen Jones
.” A shadow crossed her face and she leaned back against the pillow. “I don't know why you'd want to make a movie about an old woman like me. But you sure can. Can I ask you one thing, though?”

“Sure, Grandma, anything.”

“Show me how the camera works before you start. That's something I always did wonder about.”

“Sure, Grandma. I can go get it right now.”

“You do that, baby.”

I was back in a minute. I helped her sit up a little straighter in the bed and took the camera carefully out of its case. I went over all the parts, showed her the DV cassette (“You mean you can put a whole movie on that little tiny thing? Well, I'll be”), let her look at the monitor and frame up some shots of the room. She laughed girlishly throughout the demonstration. Then she carefully gave the camera back to me. I turned it on without comment. “Tamara, I really appreciate you taking the time to show me all that. I always loved learning stuff like that, but I never got much chance. It was only one person showed me that kind of thing.”

“Who was that?”

She closed her eyes. Her hands worked the edge of the bedspread. “Man named William Henderson.” She sighed and her face changed utterly as her eyes opened. “He was the projectionist down to the Dreamland Theatre when your mama was a girl. He . . . he was something else. Showed me all about movie projectors, how to do. And about Jacob Lawrence. You know who he is?

“No, ma'am.”

“He was just about the finest colored artist you'd ever want to see. Painter. You look him up. And I got a book, a book about him. I'll show it to you sometime.”

“So this William, he was a friend?”

She was quiet a long time before she answered. “Yes. He was about the best friend I ever had. You know, in this life, it's some people you meet, and some you recognize. With him and me, it was like that. Seem like we always knew each other.”

My chest was getting tight, but I didn't stop shooting. She turned her head to the side. “That's enough for now, baby, I need to rest. You go on. I'll see you later.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I leaned over to kiss her forehead. She looked out the window, not acknowledging me.

I left the room, glad to get out of there. I felt like crying, and it had been a mighty long time since I'd done that. I thought of the pictures of Colin's family all over the bureau, the candles he kept before them, the look on my grandmother's face as she held my camera, as she told me about William. I went to go ask my mother if I could take the car into town and get some more DV cassettes.

She said she wanted to come with me. “I'm 'bout to lose my mind sitting up in this house. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Ain't nothing happening around here,” she said. So much of our life together has been in the car. She drove, like always.

“You gonna have to get back to work soon, Mama?”

“To tell the truth, yeah. I had some vacation time saved up, and I've been there a long time so I can get another couple of weeks unpaid, but it's kind of hard to swing it without a paycheck for long. You know.”

“I know.”

“How about you, baby girl? You need to get back soon?”

Well. No time like the present. “No. I . . . Mama, I quit my job so I could come down here. I'm just gonna have to look when I get back.”

“What?”

“I wanted to meet Grandma. And I wanted . . . I wanted to see you. So I came. I can get another job. It's all right.”

Mama just looked at me. “You are crazy.” Then she smiled. “Just like me. Christ. I can't believe you quit a good job to come to Tulsa.”

“I'm glad I did. This is interesting.”

Mama snorted. “You think so?”

“Grandma says I should ask you about
Carmen Jones
. That you two used to always go to the movies together.”

Mama's eyes narrowed against her cigarette smoke. “She told you that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“We used to go to the Dreamland every week. This big old theater downtown. I drove by the spot where it was when I first got here. Wanted to see if it was still there. But it's gone. They put a Payless there. I got me some shoes instead.” She laughed a little, but her eyes were sad.

“You never told me anything about
Carmen Jones
, either,” I said.

“Nothing to tell. Mama had already seen it a million times by the time she took me. It came back through town, you know. I loved it, that's all. Same as I love some movies now. Same as you do.” She laughed again. “I did want to wear a flower behind my ear for a while. But Mama wouldn't let me. Just as well. I'd have looked pretty silly.”

“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “You were just a kid.”

“Still.” We were turning into the mall parking lot now. “Mama always was worried about how things would look. That's why she couldn't stand when I went off and got into pictures. Her baby taking off her clothes in a movie . . . she never understood that I had to. That was what was out there.”

“Must have been hard for her to understand.”

“Yeah. I guess it was.”

“Kind of like you understanding why I quit to come down here.”

She grinned suddenly. “Yeah. Kind of like that.”

 

That night, I couldn't stop thinking about what my grandmother had said: “Some people you meet, and some you recognize.” I thought about the way Colin sat down next to me the day we met and asked me about
Imitation of Life
before he even asked my name. He knew I'd know. He knew I'd care. He knew me. And I knew him too. I recognized him. I lay on my too narrow bed, tears running into my ears. Colin would understand how I felt now that I had found all these people, my family. I leaned over and rooted around in my backpack and got out my cell phone. His number was still in there. I felt stupid every time I scrolled by it. But I couldn't get myself to delete it. I sat up and called him, my mouth as dry as sand. He answered on the third ring. “Colin?”

“Tam? Tam, is that you?”

“Yeah.” Why wouldn't my voice stop shaking? “Yeah, it's me.”

“Jesus. Where . . . how are you?”

“I'm good. I . . . I work on
Law and Order
now. Well, I did.”

“I heard that.” He paused. “Why'd you say you ‘did'?”

“I quit.”

“Why?”

“I had to.” I stopped, switched the phone to my other, unsweaty hand. “I miss you.” Just came out. Didn't even know I was gonna say it.

“Really?” He sighed. “You said some evil-ass things to me. But I miss you too.” He sounded a little surprised. “I can't even kind of find a girl who's as much of a film geek as me.”

“Well, I can find plenty of film geeks . . . , but they're not you.”

We fell into a brief silence. Then he spoke. “Yeah.” Big sigh. “Yeah. Why'd you call, Tam?”

“I'm in Tulsa, with my mother and my grandmother. Who I've never even met before. And she's so amazing. The whole thing is . . . I want to tell you about it. You're the only person I know who'd understand. I'm so sorry, Col. But I want to talk to you. You're the one I want to talk to. Will you?”

I could picture him shifting the phone up closer to his ear, moving his dreads out of the way. I could picture him scowling a little, thinking. “I will. I probably shouldn't. But I will. Tell me,” he said. So I did. I sat on the edge of the pink-and-white bedspread, talking, my heart breaking open, unwilling to think of something beginning.