Third Girl from the Left (32 page)

Then you see my mother's face. First in an old headshot, so beautiful, and then her voice comes over it, cigarette-hoarsened and wised-up: “I was gonna be a movie star. The biggest there ever was.” Then there's a sudden cut to the aged face of her mother, Mildred Edwards, saying, “They killed my mama, Anna Mae Stableford. Liked to kill my daddy and me. But they shot her dead in front of me. I was eight years old.” Then you see the photograph of Anna Mae. It is weathered with age and cracked and wrinkled with sweat. Then a cut to some old footage of Angela, dancing on a bar in a scene from
Street Fighting Man
with Fred Williamson. Then an old picture of Angela as a girl, hair in neat braids, photograph turned sepia. And then Angela in the fight scene in
Coffy
, getting her dress ripped off and smiling, just a moment. She's gone almost before you can see her. And then Mildred's collage with her
Last Supper
postcard and then a picture of me and Sheila and my mother all together at Venice Beach, laughing. And then I speak again. “My mother raised me in Los Angeles with her lover, who was an actress too. My mother has never called herself a lesbian, even though she's made a life with this woman for nearly thirty years, and they love each other very much. My mother raised me the best she could, but she gave me so little history. She had such a hard time with the truth. Me, I want to tell the truth. So here's my version.” And then you hear Sly and the Family Stone singing “Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again” (full speed ahead, I'll come up with the money for the music rights somehow), and there's a whirling collage of every picture of every family member I could get, and then my grandmother starts to speak. And then my mother and then me. And there we are. My mother is beautiful and my grandmother is beautiful and I'm beautiful. You see that beauty as it finally is even though no one wants to see it as it is in a black woman in America, not a hoochie, not a ho, not a mammy, not a dyke, not a cliché, just a woman. A lot of women. Real women doing what they can, making art where they can, making their lives mean something where they can. And there's so much music in it too, and beauty and love, and as you go from image to image and hear our voices and know our story you know that there's a power here, a power that can't be denied. As you look at our beautiful, beautiful faces, there's no getting around it. There is something there that can't be denied.

I have so many people to thank. Anne Rumsey, Sharon Guskin, Stacey D'Erasmo, Bridgett Davis, Jacqueline Woodson, and David Petersen all read drafts of this book at various stages and provided thorough comments that were both thoughtful and helpful. Anne, bless her heart, read it twice. And David never let me forget that art is what's important. He also showed me how a digital video camera works, which was crucial to my understanding of Tamara.

Mo Ogrodnik generously filled me in on the workings of film school. Carmen Fields talked with me about the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1960s. Richard Wesley was very helpful in reading a portion of the manuscript and talking with me about the film industry in the 1970s. He also helped me make the link that brought the Tulsa riot into the story. James Hannaham and Rosie Sultan provided language that I was only too grateful to include in the book.

The MacDowell Colony provided vital time and space for me to work on this novel, not once but twice. Thanks also to the New York Foundation for the Arts for its generous fellowship. And the Writer's Room in Manhattan has been my home away from home for two novels now.

And thanks to Video Edge on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn for keeping that “Players Club Pix” section up to date.

To my editor, Jane Rosenman: Words fail me. You're the best.

To my agent, Geri Thoma: You've stood by me through thin and thicker. Thanks so much.

To my husband, Jeff Phillips, and my children, Nathaniel and Ruby Phillips: Your love and support mean everything to me. I truly am much blessed.

M
ARTHA
S
OUTHGATE
has been an editor at
Essence
, a reporter for
Premiere
and the
New York Daily News
, and a contributor to the
New York Times
. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel
The Fall of Rome
. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is at work on her next novel.