Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva (5 page)

“Beulah, where’s my tea, I’d like to have it while I’m still alive.” He snickered as though he’d said something funny.

From beneath grizzled eyebrows, he followed my every move as I set down the tray in his mothball-scented office.

The nauseating request “Why don’t you stay?” came every Saturday afternoon and I declined with the same worn-out answer as I poured.

“Sorry, pastor, I have chores at home.”

Maybe the repulsive coot wanted to confess, but it was too doggone late and a truth I already knew.

Eyes narrowing to a sinister ice blue, he dismissively flicked the back of his spotted hand with a sugar cube pinched between his abnormally long fingers, resembling falcon’s talons that always had Friday night’s catch gucked in ’em.

I walked out of his office, down the long hallway, the same way I walked in, through the front door, unscathed with my panties on.

I never looked back.

A
s we strolled arm in arm just like we did every Sunday for eight o’clock service, Grandma Jones noted, “What an outstanding morning, Beulah.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sure is.”

No sooner did she say that, she asked, “What the devil could all the fuss be about?” noticing folks carryin’ on something terrible in the hazy sunshine. It was pure pandemonium outside the Church of the Solid Rock.

“Sister Jones, Sister Jones,” Deacon Cyrus cried out, frantically half-limping down the nasturtium-lined walkway, waving his handkerchief. “Pastor Wins . . . Pastor Wins . . . Pastor Winslow’s on Main Street!”

Grandma tightened her grip on my arm.

“When pastor didn’t show up this morning, Sister Odile done run over to his house and found him dead at his desk, mercy . . .”

He’d need a truckload of that, I thought as I pretended to be consumed with grief.

Grandma Jones had to be led under a shady bigtooth maple where my childhood friend Seritta, pregnant with her first, cooled her with a recycled fan featuring a shepherding Jesus on one side and an ad for Pecks Funeral Home & Life Insurance on the other.

It was church all day and then some, one week later. Following the repast, nightfall blanketed Greenwood as we returned home. Exhausted, I slipped into my nightie then headed to Grandma’s bedroom but found it empty. I checked the kitchen—sometimes she made herself a hot toddy before retiring, swishing back the dread of the day—but she wasn’t there either.

Set against a silhouette of pecan trees laced with kudzu vines, she stood like shiny black marble, silvery moonlight illuminating Grandma’s dark blue skin.

In a raspy whisper, she commanded, “Come ’ere, chile.”

Barefoot, I stepped off the uneven porch, cutting into muggy night air with uncertainty; an exaggerated symphony of stridulating cicadas and the intermittent twinkling of fireflies ushered me closer.

In a flash, Grandma backhanded me square across my face. Had it comin’, just didn’t know when.

“Didn’t have the courage to do it myself,” was all Grandma said. She reached up, cradling my stinging face in her knotted hands, saying, “You gotta go.”

With the ghost of Maddie Mae between us, Grandma tucked me in that unforgettable night, her eyes swollen with grief.

“Love you, Beulah.”

I held my breath for several seconds.

“Didn’t always say it but that don’t mean it wadn’t always there.”

As much as I tried to hold on to my anger and tears, everything broke inside for me and my grandmother.

Pulling her handmade crazy quilt over me like a protective shield, she said, “Sleep, Beulah, you’re gonna need your strength. Ask for forgiveness and whatever you do, promise you’ll nevah, evah talk about what happen’.”

“Promise.”

Before turning off the light she reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a key, placing it on a chest of drawers. “Tomorrah, go down to the cella’. Behin’ the stair is a piece of old wood level with the dirt with a heavy rock on top. In that hole is everything I been savin’ for you. I’ma have you go up north ’n’ stay awhile. A friend of a friend’s gonna keep an eye on ya.”

I had no idea Grandma Jones knew a soul outside Greenwood, with the exception of Minnie Red in New York. I hoped it would be her.

“And don’t be openin’ that box till you pull outta Greenwood, ya hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She closed the door.

I fell asleep to her weepy singsong redemption.

Before the rooster’s call I knew something wasn’t right. I flew down the stairs, tearing through the house, and found Grandma slumped on the couch with an open Bible on her lap. I was never so petrified, standing in disbelief for the longest before approaching her. A homemade bookmark at her feet read: Romans 6:9, “Death no longer has dominion . . .”

“Nooo, come back, Grandma! It’s all my fault. Don’t leave me here all alone . . .”

Startled awake, Grandma Jones exclaimed, “What in the devil are you carryin’ on about, Beulah?” knocking me backward. “And why are you down there on the floor lookin’ like zip-in-distress an’ actin’ like you got no sense? What time is it anyway? Musta’ dozed off. Couldn’t get a lick a sleep last night for nothin’.”

“Grandma, last night—” I began.

“What about it?” she cut in, daring me to remember. “Yesterday never happened, Today’s a new deal, and Tomorrow’s your future. Now get those clothes pressed and no cat faces on my shirts.”

And that’s the way it went.

After a short investigation, it was determined that Pastor Winslow died of a massive heart attack, and the church ladies were all too concerned about my departure. Next came the Greenwood Inquisition from a corpulent Miss Whilemina, puffed up like an overstuffed hen, cornering me at church that next Sunday.

“Beulah, where you gonna go, chile?” she asked, fogging up her glasses, magically pulling a crumpled Kleenex she’d tucked under her twinset sleeve. “And who’s gonna take care of you? Remember you’re only seventeen. Your grandmother sure ain’t got no money to be sendin’ you up north to that sinful place, New York City. Look what happened to so-and-so . . . I forget her name, but it wasn’t good. Nothin’ but Satan’s temptations waitin’ for you,” she said, shaking her wigged head, a church hat perched on top, accented with an oversize gold begonia.

Little did Miss Whilemina know, New York City was exactly what I needed to spread my wings and dive into a new me.

“I’m gonna stay with my . . . um, make-believe cousin DeeDee before I go out to California,” I replied.

“DeeDee? I ain’t never heard nothin’ about no DeeDee before and I been knowin’ your grandma all her life. You sure you tellin’ me the truth, Beulah?”

As sure as the nose on my face, I wanted to say, but responded, “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure.”

I was finally heading toward a future where nobody knew me. I could start fresh. It had to be better than what I was leaving behind.

After a tearful send-off by Grandma Jones, her prayer circle, Seritta, and the rest, Deacon Cyrus droned on forever, bringing up Winslow’s “Home Going Service,” a longwinded sermon about hell and damnation, and a drill of the Ten Commandments before delivering me to the red brick train station. He gave me a parting hug that lasted a smidge too long, so I stepped on his left foot, rumored to have been afflicted with a nasty case of gout.

Shedding my shady past quicker than a crepe myrtle could shed its bark, I boarded, heading for Grand Central Station. The first jolt was strong. The second, final.

As the train gained momentum, Smokebush and Oleander blurring together, I stretched out my legs on the upper bunk feelin’ kinda grown. After a treat of Grandma’s applesauce cake, I looked down at the metal box resting beside me. Before turning the key, I took a deep breath, then pulled the stubborn lid open.

On top, there were two photographs of my mother I’d never seen before. No more than five years old, she was sitting on Grandma Jones’s lap, both of them looking
serene, without smiles. In the other, she was holding Easter eggs in her Sunday best.

Gently placing the photos to the side, I poured a string of pearls out of a satchel, in mint condition. Next, wrapped in plastic and newspaper, secured with hardened rubber bands, was a stack of cash: three thousand, six hundred and forty-two dollars in small bills! Wow! I’d never seen that much green before in one place but I didn’t have to think long to know where the blood money had come from.

At the very bottom, a sealed yellowing envelope. I sliced it open with my pocketknife. There were two documents, one my birth certificate that stated Maddie Mae Jones, Mother—Father, Unknown. I took my time unfolding the other, a letter, spreading it out on my lap. It read:

Sweet, sweet Beulah, by now you are of age. Love you more than all the stars. Wanted you to have somethin’ when you left Money Road, a little of your mamma and me to remember us by. God Bless, Grandma Jones.

A tear spilled, bleeding the blue ink into the white. I read it over and over before placing all my new treasures in my purse. I peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and added it to what I had pinned inside my bra.

Still seeing them as an unwanted reminder of my father, I sliced off ten inches of my plaits, opened the narrow window next to my bunk, and tossed the locks into the wind, watching them dance away like two drunken schoolgirls.

The monotonous rhythm of the train wheels relaxed me as I looked out across acres and acres of cotton fields, knowing spirits were waving with pricked hands, whispering, “Don’t forget, Beulah.”

Under the Mississippi sky, ablaze with a blanket of stars, I perilously hung hope onto the tip of one of Orion’s pointy fingers, embarking on an odyssey that would ultimately bring me more than Erica Kane fame.

When I arrived at Grand Central Station a day and a half later with optimism in my heart, Minnie Red met me at the station just as I predicted, and man, can I say glam-o-rous! Her hair was
done
. Brows all arches and whatnot, dressed to the nines! I felt like a country bumpkin in my tired outfit.

“How was your trip, Beulah?” she asked in a fake accent somewhere between London and Greenwood. She had some white man on her arm.

“Fine.”

My great expectation that she’d show me the ropes was short-lived. After a week and five hundred dollars lighter, I was on my own. I didn’t waste time acclimating to my new environment, making the residential YWCA my new home.

Struggling in the Big Apple slinging hash that first year was no fun, but Grandma had taught me how to hold on to a penny. Then I met smooth-talkin’ Ian Grady, also known as “trouble,” and I admit, I moved way too fast with the ex-boxer, getting a quickie marriage license at City Hall before our daughter, Ivy, was born in the spring of ’93.

Picking husbands wouldn’t be one of my strengths. As swiftly as we tied the knot, I untied it and got a Mexican divorce by mail after Ian was carted off to Rikers for the umpteenth time for petty theft and a potpourri of other charges. I tore out of New York City for the Golden State with Ivy on my hip like my hair was on fire.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS,
hot off the press, kids. Soap stars are getting swatted like flies. As reported last week, R&R is starting to pass out pink slips faster than I can say “81% off on Cliffhanger Weekly for a six-month subscription.” I guess it’s not surprising, since Our Lives to Contend, Medical Clinic, and The Daring and the Damned all axed at least two of their major stars last year in an effort to save money. And trust me, honey, the dominoes have only begun to fall. So much for champagne wishes and caviar dreams . . . back to tuna and beer.

The Diva

E
choes of Grandma Jones’s voice continued buzzing in my head two espressos and several Tylenol later. Still suffering from a colossal hangover, I was trying to get rid of a stubborn sheet crease across my cheek, which I managed to camouflage with a “shut it down” Patricia Underwood brim.

Gingerly tipping through my forever-under-construction kitchen toward the garage for work, I heard my BlackBerry playing Rachelle Ferrell’s latest hit signaling an incoming call. Honestly, I still didn’t completely understand how to work the damn thing, although my sixteen-year-old computer-savvy daughter, Ivy, had shown me countless times.

“Hello,” I whispered into the device. Anything louder would have set me back several migraines.

“Good morning, Calysta, this is Edith Norman,” she announced in a piercing voice.

Edith Norman? Why’s the president of daytime television for the WBC calling me?

“Hey Edith, how’s tricks?”

“Excuse me?”

“Uh, never mind. How are things?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid. I know you have an early call time, but I’d like you to stop by my office first.”

“Um, sure, can you tell me what this is about?”

“I think you know.”

The phone went dead and I thought of a horoscope clipping I kept in my wallet: “A test will come on how quickly you can overcome disappointment. Be careful with your words and listen closely to others, they may ask you to give something for nothing.”

The sole of my Ong shoe pressed the gas pedal and I began the long trek from my palm-tree-lined driveway in Malibu Canyon to
The Rich and the Ruthless
set on the WBC lot in Burbank. I hit the CD button and was jolted by the sounds of someone calling himself Soulja Boy, quickly replacing Ivy’s disc with the soothing voice of Lizz Wright.