You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (19 page)

“So,” she said, “nobody’s anything.”

“I heard you were happily married,” said Anastasia, ignoring Irene’s remark.

“We
were
happy. I’m almost sure we were happy. You know happiness is being able to assume you are happy. Anyway, he left me.”

“I
love
being white,” Anastasia said, plunging in and screwing up her face in a mock excess of delight. “Ask me why.”

“Why?” said Irene.

“Because as a black person I had no sense of humor!” She laughed, and her funny face and her laughter meshed.

“I can’t deny that,” said Irene. “Besides, passing for white is so—so—
colorful.
” She meant, really, that it was passé.

“No, no,” said Anastasia. “That’s
Imitation of Life
—and what was that other tacky movie?
Pinky?
Not even a Jessie Fauset or a Nella Larsen novel, where being white is such a to-do about what colors now look good against your skin. There
were
shades of
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
in the beginning—you know, could a potentially
great
black woman find happiness as a mediocre white one?—but that passed.” She laughed. “Anyway, I’m not passing; I’m just through trying to correct other people’s opinion.”

Irene, staring directly into Anastasia’s eyes, felt the strangest sensation. Those eyes now looked out of a white person. What did that mean?

“I loved being married,” said Irene, lowering her gaze to her glass. “I was finally calm enough to look about me without panic.” She shrugged. For years of her marriage there had been so little panic she’d fallen asleep. So that if you asked her what she did between 1965 and 1968, she would probably recall only that those three years amounted to one day, really, and that on that day one of her neighbors had invited her to go fishing, and she had declined.

“That’s
it,
” said Anastasia, “sort of. When you’re not living with someone it’s like all sides of you are exposed at once. Right? But when you are living with someone at least one side of you is covered. Panic can still strike, but not on that one side.” She wanted to emphasize how this was especially true in the case of race. That, having put race aside as a cause of concern, she could now concentrate on whatever assaults were in store for the other facets of herself. But of course Irene would say she had not put aside race, only chosen a different side of it to live on. Blacks who had not had her experience were rarely inclined to appreciate her point of view; though she understood this, she still thought it spoke of limitation on their part.

“What happened to Source, Peace and Calm, Bliss and Co.—South America? Do you have the baby here with you?” Irene asked, looking about the bar as if she expected to see Bliss crawling under the tables in their direction.

Anastasia looked glum. Her cheeks, Irene noticed, sagged when she wasn’t smiling. But this was no worse than what the years had done to Irene’s own face.

Anastasia had switched to Mai Tais; in her mind, Alaska and Hawaii were very close—they were so distant from the other forty-eight states. She said, sullenly, taking a sip from her small, overdressed drink (in addition to the traditional umbrella, there were tiny snowshoes), “I have a permanent tremor under my eye now—you know that? I’ve had it since living in San Francisco. It comes and goes. Now that I’ve mentioned it, watch for it. It is sure to make its appearance before long.”

Her right eye, underneath the eye, really, began to quiver.

“I
hate
that,” she said, clapping her palm over it. “I don’t know
where
they are. They may have gone to South America, for all I know. I don’t know
what
happened to Bliss.” She giggled.

“Something happened to bliss,” said Irene, and giggled also. The two of them whooped, thumped their glasses on the table and rumbled their feet underneath. A solicitous waitress inquired if there were something she could do.

“Find out what happened to bliss!” they said, laughing up at her and ordering doubles.

“After a couple of years I began to fall apart again,” said Anastasia. “Facial tic, constant colds, diarrhea, you name it. You should have seen me. My hair looked like brass
wire,
my skin had more eruptions than Indonesia. My
teeth
were loosening.… If I was so tranquil, why was this happening? I hadn’t slept a whole night since I couldn’t remember when, either.

“But I didn’t want to leave Source, oh no! Listen,
average
sex, but with great dope, a little music, somebody above you to intercede with God, and the world outside your
immediate
premises fails to interest.”

“
Hum
mmmm,” said Irene.

“Leave Source? Not on your life! Or
my
life, as the case was. Enter my parents—as screwed up as I was myself, but a mite put out that I was in the habit of talking to myself as easily as to strangers on the street.” She shrugged. “Back to Arkansas. A few months of house arrest, no dope, church music (listen, the only reason Jehovah’s Witnesses can sing is they’ve ripped off so many Baptists) and the realization that neither black nor white had ever known what to do with us in Arkansas. That we were freaks. And that it was my parents’ ambivalence, as much as anything, that had driven us all nuts. They were horrified if my friends were poor and black, disappointed in my taste if they were black and middle class, and embittered if they were white; where was my racial pride?

“I married the first man who signed up from Arkansas to work on the Alaska pipeline. Found a job. Divorced him.
Voilà.
”

Irene thought of Fania, whose interest in reading had finally been sustained by the slave narratives of black women so similar, she felt, to herself, and who would have read with keen interest the story Anastasia was now telling.

Was your mother white?

Yes, she pretty white; not white enough for white people. She have long hair, but it was kinda wavy.…

Were your children mulattoes?

No, Sir! They were all white. They looked just like him…then he told me he was goin’ to die…and he said that if I would promise him that I would go to New York, he would leave me and the children free.… He told me no person would know it (that I was colored) if I didn’t tell it
^*

“Did I ever tell you about Fania Evans?” asked Irene. “No? She was one of the women I tried to teach to read the newspaper. I had trouble because she refused to learn to read anything that hurt her. The world being what it is, this left very little news.”

“Oh yes, I think I remember something about her,” said Anastasia, in the spirit of the conversation. She didn’t remember a word. “But wait a minute,” she said, “let me really bring you up to date. The man I live with now is an Indian, an Aleut. Did I tell you that?”

“You probably tried to,” said Irene, “but no saga of sexual superiority, womanlike tenderness or rippling muscles,
please.
”

“He does have it all,” said Anastasia, happily, “but I won’t mention it.”

“Thanks,” said Irene.

“We live in a small fishing village where the only industry is smoking salmon. That’s all the women there know how to do. But as a white woman—” she grinned across the table at Irene, who at that moment was feeling unpleasantly sour, “or should I say as a non-Native? Anyway, they didn’t expect me to know how to smoke salmon. When I did it along with them, they were delighted. It was as if I’d evolved. They don’t know this yet, but I’m on my way to being them.” She paused. “I think really that Source was a fascist. Only a fascist would say nobody’s anything. Everybody’s something.
Somebody.
And I couldn’t feel like somebody without a color. I don’t think anyone in America
can.…
Which really
is
pathetic. However, looking as I look, black wasn’t special enough. It required two hours of explanation to every two seconds of joy.” She paused again. “And it
was
two seconds.”

“Gotcha,” said Irene. She was so drunk by now that she understood everything Anastasia said as if she’d thought it herself. But she also forgot it at once.

“Now, tell me about Fania
Who
sis? I want to know all about her,” said Anastasia.

“No,” said Irene, “I’m too drunk.”

“I’ll order coffee,” said Anastasia. “I also have to go to the toilet.”

“So do I,” said Irene, feeling her stomach muscles rebel against her control-top panty hose.

When they returned, a pitcher of coffee shaped like a moose’s head awaited them. Irene was still mopping her face and neck with a wet paper towel, and Anastasia was taking a small container of honey from her handbag. She did not eat sugar.

For ten minutes they drank the strong coffee in silence. Eventually, their heads began to clear.

For the first time, Irene was aware of the people in the booth directly behind them.
Fifteen years ago,
a man’s voice said,
they weren’t allowed in places like this. No dogs, Eskimos or Indians Allowed. That’s terrible,
a woman’s voice replied.
Especially since it was their country,
a young man spoke, sneeringly.
But
we
developed it,
said the young woman, in sisterly explanation.
Oh, sure,
said the young man.
How can a woman say something so stupid? You’ve been developed yourself, only you’re so dumb you think you like it.
The older woman’s voice, attempting to keep the peace, spoke up, changing the subject.
Is it really all that much bigger than Texas? Oh, way bigger,
said the older man with pride.

All Irene had known about Alaska she’d read in an Edna Ferber novel. Now she had learned about gigantic turnips, colossal watermelons, marijuana that was not only legally grown, harvested and used, but that regularly grew twenty feet tall in the hot, intensely productive summers. She had learned that parkas were way beyond her budget and that mukluks made her feet sweat. The Eskimos and Indians she saw on the street looked like any oriental San Franciscan. Now her mind stuck on
fifteen years ago,
and her own witnessing of similar signs coming down in the South. But the signs had already done their work. For as long as she lived she knew she would be intimidated by fancy restaurants, hotels, even libraries, from which she had been excluded before.

“It’s nice to look at you. To tell you I
enjoy
the way you look.” Anastasia reached over and caressed Irene’s cheek. Then she got up, bent over Irene, and very deliberately gave her a kiss, pressing her lips firmly against the warm, jasmine-smelling brown skin. “I always envied you, before,” she said.

“It’s supposed to be the other way around,” said Irene, smiling.

“It was so
miserable,
growing up, not resembling any of my friends. Resembling, instead, the people they hated! And oh, black people were so
confused.
They showed me in every way they envied me because my color and my hair made things ‘easy’ for me, but those other people, with hair and skin like mine, they despised, and took every opportunity to tell me so. And another thing, I’m really rather homely, even funny-looking. But I was convinced very early that I was a beauty. I was never permitted an accurate reflection of myself.”

“Why do I think you must have enjoyed it, at least a little?” asked Irene.

“Of course I was glad to be the ‘princess’ for a long time,” said Anastasia. “I don’t deny it. But never without
such
feelings of guilt. Why was I picked to be Snow White, Cinderella, and any other white lady in distress, when
all
my classmates were better actresses? Why did the boys
flock
to me, in high school, when I couldn’t dance, was afraid to make jokes, and had a mother who let them know the darker shades of black were not acceptable? Oh, finally I got so
tired
of black people, that was why I decided to go to college in the North. They finally seemed to me—merely thoughtless, and selfish, and so fucked up over color it was embarrassing. Then in the sixties they started crying ‘freedom!’ but certainly this wasn’t for the likes of me.”

“You already had your freedom,” said Irene. “The freedom to go either way.”

“To be
thrown
either way, you mean,” said Anastasia. “Even you got in on the throwing.”

Like most people who have come to believe they are better than they are, Irene resented the notion that she could be intolerant. She sat up very straight to listen to this.

“Remember Styron’s
Nat Turner
?” asked Anastasia.

“Vaguely,” said Irene, who had worked diligently over a decade to erase the book from memory.

“Well, I remember it very well. One of our professors had the nerve to teach it to our class, and when you couldn’t make him see what an insult Styron’s
monster
was to the memory of the real Nat Turner, you were so mad you wouldn’t speak to anyone on campus for days. That was when you started to drink a lot. And you were this shining example of sober, intelligent black peoplehood, too!” Anastasia laughed. “Not only drunk every evening, but
nastily
drunk. Throwing
up,
starting
fights,
calling people
names.
And they couldn’t really
expel
you; you were the only really
dark
black student they had. And they
adored
you. But you said that was shit because they could
not
adore you and teach Styron’s version of your history at the same time. Which made absolute sense to me.”

“Hypocrites, the whole bunch,” said Irene.

“And so were you. You
loved
being adored. Being exceptional. Representing the race. I knew, from the backhanded way
I
was treated, that they were hypocrites. I mean, they knew
I
was black, I just didn’t
look
black. I never got any of the attention you got, and I could have used some, because those white folks were just as strange to me as they were to you. But you thought everything was
fine
until the hypocrisy touched you.”