Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (8 page)

Before heading back downstairs, I examined my reflection for obvious signs of stress and saw looking back at me what appeared to be an attractive, confident woman. The contrast between how I looked and how I felt was so stark, it actually made me smile.
Who is that serene-looking bitch?
I thought, remembering Richard Pryor’s famous line during his divorce proceedings when his wife showed up looking like a sixteen-year-old virgin instead of his willing partner in crimes too numerous to detail here.

The funny part is the woman in the mirror looking back at me seemed to be totally on top of things; cool, calm, and collected. Maybe I’m more in control than I think and just maybe Miss Iona’s right about surrounding the Rev with a crowd to bring out the best in him. He’s good at crowds. It’s the one-on-one that makes him crazy.
Me, too
.

Thankfully, the smell of freshly brewed coffee floated up the stairs before I could head down that road, so I slipped on my shoes and joined Miss Iona in the kitchen.

“Can I help you?”

It was a purely rhetorical question. Miss Iona was bustling around efficiently, her amazing little hat still in place on top of her salt-and-pepper hair, her suede high heels clicking daintily on the tile floor. To paraphrase Gloria Steinem, she needed my help like a fish needs a bicycle.

“I’ve got it under control,” she said. “Sit down, sit down. How’s your mother doing? Still stirring up trouble on the West Coast?”

“Every chance she gets,” I said, taking a seat at the table where I had eaten countless bowls of Cheerios, innumerable platters of fried chicken. “She just led a demonstration against her new department chair and they’ve been friends for fifteen years.”

Miss Iona laughed. “I knew they shouldn’t have given her that tenure. I told you she was going to run amok out there!”

Miss Iona was only a few years older than my mom, but she had remained untouched by the rush of the Women’s Movement that swept my mother along in a torrent of revolutionary fervor, redefining her life and her tribe and finally giving her the strength to override the Rev’s shocked disapproval and leave him so she could focus her considerable energies on becoming a fully liberated woman, which she did, although last time I checked, neither one of them had filed for divorce.

On the other hand, Miss Iona seemed never to have imagined herself anything other than completely free. She was the first woman I knew who always had her own money, who never had children, who didn’t marry for the first time until most of her friends were already widows, bought a house at thirty, paid it off at forty, and never asked any man any of us had ever seen for permission to do anything. My mother’s defiance was amusing to Miss Iona.

“Defiance means you got somebody with power over you,” she said once after listening to my mother speaking at a pro-choice rally. Miss Iona wasn’t much on demonstrations, but she’d come along to look out for me while my mom was doing her thing. “If that’s the case, you don’t need to be defiant, you need to be gone.”

“What about the women who can’t go?” my mother would say, but Miss Iona couldn’t even wrap her mind around that whole idea.

“Can’t go?” she’d say. “Who’s holding them?”

“It’s complicated,” my mom would say.

“Seems pretty simple to me,” Miss Iona would say gently but firmly, like she didn’t want my mother to be insulted, but was unwilling to feign agreement just to keep the conversation moving
along in whatever was my mom’s current direction. “Either you’re free or you’re not.”

And my mom would give me that
She’s wrong, I’m right, I’ll explain later
look and smile at Miss Iona, who smiled back, just like she was doing now.

“Your mother always took everything so seriously,” Miss Iona said.

“She still does,” I said, wondering why she was taking so long to get to the heart of the matter: what the Rev said when she told him I was coming.

“Old folks don’t change,” she said, “except to get more like they already are.”

“Amen to that,” I said, as she poured us two steaming cups of coffee and then went to the refrigerator for cream, to the small cabinet over the sink for the sugar bowl, and then back to the silverware drawer for two spoons.

“So,” I said when she finally stopped bustling around and sat down across from me, still without removing her beautiful hat. “What did the Rev say when you told him I was coming?”

Miss Iona raised her cup to her lips and blew delicately. That’s when I knew. I groaned loudly and involuntarily.

“Oh, Lord, please tell me he knows I’m coming!”

“Don’t blaspheme,” she said. “I think he
suspects
. You know how hard it is to slip anything past the Rev.”

“He
suspects?
” I set down my cup harder than I meant to and stood up. My first inclination was to dash upstairs, grab my stuff, and run for my life. “You didn’t tell him?”

“Now calm down, Ida B, before you break up your mother’s wedding china and the Rev demands both our heads on a platter. I tried to tell him, but I couldn’t find the right moment. Everything has been so hectic with the beginning to Black History Month. He’s speaking all over the state, not to mention half the pulpits in Atlanta.
They all booked him before he lost his mind, of course, but I don’t think they even care. As far as these Negroes are concerned, the Rev can do no wrong.”

The Rev’s waning popularity among the people who were running things didn’t translate into smaller crowds among the people upon whom he had always counted. He could still draw a crowd in every town in Georgia just by showing up.

“This was not our deal,” I said, refusing to be distracted by the Rev’s busy schedule. “You promised me.”

“I know I did,” she said, reaching up now to remove the little hat and place it carefully on the table beside her. “And I meant to do it, you know I did …”

Her voice trailed off and then she looked up at me suddenly with a bright smile. “But you’re here now, aren’t you? And you know once he sees you, all will be forgiven.”

“I haven’t done anything to be forgiven for,” I said. “He’s the one who needs to say he’s sorry.”

She looked disappointed. “He’s still your father, Ida B. Don’t you think he deserves that respect?”

How had we gone from her not keeping up her end of our bargain to my alleged lack of respect for the Rev? My head was throbbing again.

“That’s not fair,” I said, “and you know it. He can’t keep going back and forth between being my father and being a hotshot Civil Rights leader.”

“He has no choice,” she said, shrugging her shoulders gracefully. “He’s always both. Always has been. Always will be.”

This conversation was going nowhere. I sat back down across from her, suddenly feeling exhausted and grumpy. I needed a hot shower and a hot meal.

“So now what?” I said, wondering what were the chances I’d get either one anytime soon.

“Calm down,” she said again. “Don’t I always have a plan?”

“Okay, let’s hear it,” I said, picking up my coffee and suddenly wishing she’d put some brandy in it.

“Like I told you, I’m having a little something tonight at my house in Eddie’s honor,” Miss Iona said. “His garden over at Washington High just won a big award. You should see what he’s done with those kids. Tomatoes you wouldn’t believe!”

“Go on,” I said, stopping her before she got too far off the track.

She frowned as if she didn’t understand what I was still concerned about. “That’s it. Soon as they get back from Madison, Eddie will bring the Rev right over.”

“And then what?” I could hear the stress rising in my voice. What happened to that serene girl in the mirror? Probably gone back to bed like she had some sense.

“Then I’ll say …” She put on a big happy smile. “‘Surprise, Rev! Look who’s here!’ And then you step up and say, ‘I love you, Daddy! I have missed you so much and no crowd of fast-talking Chicago Negroes should ever come between us again!’ Then hug his neck and I swear to you he’ll be the happiest man in West End.”

The scene was straight out of a Tyler Perry movie, but real life is always a little more complicated.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Girl, please,” she said. “He’s already so proud of you he’s about to bust. It’s that ego that wouldn’t let him call you.”

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I knew they were about to. “Proud of me for what?”

“Your new position at the right hand of
you know who
,” she said, and actually winked. “He may have issues with Obama, but he’s been bragging on you all over town.”

I wondered if it was too late to get on a flight out of here this afternoon. “You told him I was going to work at the White House?”

“Guilty as charged,” she said cheerfully. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but it was just too good to hold. We’re all so proud of you.”

My heart sank ever lower, if that was possible. “All? Who else knows?”

“Well,” she said, “I had to tell my Charlie. You know that. And Eddie was there when I told your dad and I don’t know who all he’s told.”

I stood up again and walked over to the window. I couldn’t look her in the eye.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

I took a deep breath. “I didn’t get the job.”

“At the White House?”

“Anywhere.”

Now it was Miss Iona’s turn to be confused. “But I thought you said you were going to work for the president.”

“I was wrong,” I said, and that was the whole truth of it. I had dreamed up a fantasy job and then discovered that was exactly what it was: a fantasy. It felt good to tell her the truth, but I sure do wish she hadn’t spread the word quite so fast.

“Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry. What happened?”

She sounded so sympathetic, I almost teared up. “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t quite as indispensable as I thought I was.”

She was quiet for a minute and then she said my fear out loud. “Do you think the Rev …
being the Rev …
had anything to do with it?”

I sat back down and took a sip of my coffee. “I don’t think it helped.”

She pursed her lips and sighed. “You know I wouldn’t have breathed a word if I’d thought it wasn’t a done deal.”

“I know.” There was no point in blaming Miss Iona. She had only repeated what I’d told her. The fault was mine.

“Is there any chance it’s just taking them a while to find the right place to put you?” she said, grabbing at the same straws I’d been clutching for weeks. “You know, someplace where they could use all your talents to the best effect.”

“There’s always a chance,” I said. “Probably not at the White House, but, you know, somewhere else in government.”

“Well, if they don’t make you an offer,” she said, covering my hand with her own and giving it a protective squeeze, “they’re not as smart as they think they are.”

I appreciated her loyalty, although the thing that’s so impressive about the new administration is that they are
exactly
as smart as they think they are. But right now, I had to focus on damage control. This fantasy had the potential to blow up in my face,
repeatedly
, on the very night I wanted to keep everything, and
everyone
, on an even keel.

“So does everybody who’s going to be at your house know?”

She nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Then I can’t go,” I said.

“Why not?” She looked surprised.

“What am I going to say to all those people who think I’m headed for the West Wing?”

She thought for a minute, than brightened again. “Tell ’em you’re in delicate final negotiations and everything is still hush-hush until things are finalized.”

I was impressed. As excuses go, that one wasn’t half bad. “You think they’ll buy it?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “Nobody knows how anybody gets those jobs. The more mysterious you make it sound, the better. Then after you and the Rev have a chance to talk, you can straighten it out with the others, no problem.”

She said “no problem” the way people say “no worries,” as if to imply that your insistence on obsessing about the matter at hand is simply a choice of perspective, which could easily be corrected by a little positive thinking. I wish I could say her confidence was infectious, but all I felt was a growing conviction that this whole evening was going to hell in a handbasket, Miss Iona’s good intentions notwithstanding.

She was looking at me sympathetically again. “You want me to put some brandy in that coffee?”

“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day,” I said. She got the bottle from the pantry and poured a dollop in my cup and another in hers.

“Don’t let me forget to put it back,” she said. “Don’t want the Rev to know we got into his private stash.”

We clinked our cups in a wordless toast, each took a nice long swallow, and sat looking at each other.

“This will never work,” I said.

“Of course it will.” She patted my hand again. “Trust me.”

EIGHT