the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Oh no, I was doing it too quickly. Blinking, I thought, Oh God, I’m hyperventilating; Cait is going to come back and find me passed out. I needed something to breathe into. A paper bag? Where the hell would I get a paper bag now? I pushed my face into my purse—Kate Spade, real; I’d gotten it at a sale at work—and sucked in air that smelled like lipstick, sugarless gum and a piece of chocolate cake left over from a lunchtime birthday celebration. The cake was wrapped in a napkin next to my engagement ring. Phew, that was better. I pulled my head out of the bag and looked around to make sure Cait hadn’t seen me, but she was exchanging niceties with the beer tender. Okay, more slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. That was much better.
Cait returned to the table with two beers that looked thick as stew. “Here you go.” She put the sweating, oversize mugs in front of us. She looked at me more closely. “Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”
“Yes, I’m warm.” I removed my jacket and fanned myself like one of my great-aunts having a hot flash in church. I was wearing a stretchy sleeveless turtleneck and felt self-conscious and semi-naked.
“You have lovely skin.” Cait ran the back of her hand from my shoulder to my elbow. This was not helping me relax, but I didn’t want her to stop touching me. I needed to get hold of myself. It took the willpower of several people for me to gently pull my arm away.
“Well, er, I wanted to ask you some questions about your conference. I mean, what is a lesbian sex conference, anyway? Is lesbian sex so complicated that lesbians need to share tips? Is it informational, for straight women?” I was speaking so rapidly that I could hardly understand what I was saying. Why was I talking like a member of the White House press corps?
“Which question should I answer first?” Cait rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me intently. Her cheeks were flushed, too, and her eyes that bright, gunmetal gray. I shut my mouth, and smiled.
“Yes, the sex is so complicated that lesbians don’t even agree on what lesbian sex is, so there are endless areas of debate.” I liked that she was funny. But more, I liked sitting so close to her that I could feel heat rising from her skin as she spoke.
“Why don’t you join us next weekend, and you can find out for yourself?”
“Will I need lesbian ID to get in?” I looked at her suggestively and felt a flutter of excitement. I liked this playful, sexy me.
“If you dump your fiancé, I don’t think you need one.” Her gaze remained direct. With the mention of Keith, the light moment had passed. I felt nervous again. Why was I doing some provocative Tracy-Hepburn verbal back and forth with a woman? Actually, with anyone. I wasn’t the flirty type. I was more quietly straightforward. You had to peel off layers to get to my soft, sensual center. Outside of my job as “sex reporter,” when the vibe became even vaguely sexual, my sense of humor generally left the building.
“Listen, just come on Saturday and find out for yourself.” She smiled, and I noticed small lines around her eyes. I had called them “crows’ eyes” when I was a child. I wondered how old Cait was. A little older than me. Thirty-five-ish, I guessed.
“I’ll try,” I said, taking a breath and smiling back. Cait took a swallow of beer, and set the empty glass back on the table.
“Good.” Her voice was velvety and low. We made small talk for a few minutes more before she leaned toward me and brushed her lips very lightly against my cheek. A whisper kiss, like a secret. I moved my face back slowly, and looked into her eyes and lingered for a moment. I felt hot all over; even my hair and the tips of my fingernails were on fire.
“I’ll see you Saturday.” She stood, turned and walked away, moving quickly, with a wide-legged stride. I even liked the way she walked. There was something forceful about it. Not exactly masculine, but not feminine either. She didn’t have that distinctive New-York-City-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way walk. It was something different. She looked purposeful, like she knew where she was going. As I stumbled dizzily out the door, I was the opposite. I looked like I had no idea where I was headed.
Chapter 6
I tugged open the door to my apartment still thinking about Cait, wondering if she was thinking about me. Our duplex, on 128th Street and Adam Clayton Powell, was the envy of our friends. Keith’s prescient uncle Carlton had seen Harlem’s potential in the ’80s, and had cashed out his retirement savings to buy the apartment after the crash in 1987 when the market was in a slump. Since then, he had retired to the Cayman Islands, leaving us the live-in landlords of the roomy two-bedroom.
Keith had insisted on decorating our place. Though I liked bright colors and funky, eclectic furniture and artwork that didn’t quite go together, Keith preferred things simple and spare, just short of monastic with lots of white walls, dark wood and shiny floors. He did enjoy collecting African-American memorabilia, including sculptures and paintings, scattered touches of Afrocentricity without looking like a Senegalese bazaar. He scoured yard sales and flea markets for African-American photographs. His prize was the 1894 graduating class of Meharry Medical College, all spit-shine and promise.
As I took off my shoes and placed them under a bench near the door, I smelled her before I heard her voice—my mother’s ever-present scent, the Blue Nile musk that she dabbed on her throat and behind her ears. That unmistakable fragrance made me think of her pushing through the busy African market at 116th Street to buy it, haggling in pennies and charm with her favorite Ivory Coast vendor. What was she doing here?
“Look who’s finally home,” my mother said as I walked into the living room. She was sitting next to Keith, practically on top of him, perched on the wide arm of our leather chair. At least I think he was in the chair; my mother’s bushy, iconic hair was obscuring most of his face.
For the past decade or so my mother, Janet Wright, had been known as the Rosa Parks of hair. In the early ’80s, after many years as anchorwoman of the Five at Five News Hour, and in the waning days of the Black Power Movement, my mother had decided it was time for the viewers to see the real her. No more shiny pageboy lacquered in place. “I don’t need white women’s hair to be legitimate,” she had said to Daddy and me, as I sat dangling on the edge of his lap, my head buried in his shoulder.
With that, she had left the room, Daddy and I trailing her into the bathroom. She leaned over the sink, and we watched as her pressed, bone-straight hair disappeared and unruly curls sprang to life.
“This is me in all of my black womanness,” she had said, using a pick, price tag still on it, to shape her damp, newly minted ’fro. That evening, she appeared on camera sans straightened hair, wearing a black and gold dashiki, the defiant afro crowning her face. Her hair filled the screen as she read the events of the day, sending shocked viewers to their telephones. After the first break, WHTV, the parent company, panicked, removing her from the air and triggering a three-minute blackout, the longest dead-air stretch in local news history. Though callers were equally horrified and thrilled, my mother was suspended indefinitely.
“Screw them,” my mother had said when she got home that evening, her body brimming with energy and excitement. “I sent The Man a message.” She disappeared from the room, and raced to the phone, spending much of the evening calling her network of “sister colleagues,” and asking them to kick into action.
The next day, a nearly defunct local chapter of the Black Panther Party re-energized itself and organized a protest known as the Black Blackout. African-American viewers—or Afro-American as they were called at the time—and their allies turned away from Channel Five in droves. After two weeks of sinking ratings, my mother was grouchily reinstated. She became famous for that moment, frozen in time as a militant hair revolutionary. “It’s MY damn hair,” she had insisted, and this became her slogan printed on the fronts of T-shirts, posters and buttons. The hair that had made her famous, now streaked with wiry gray, was still wild and alive.
“Hi, Mom, hey honey.” I leaned down and kissed my mother’s powdery forehead, and patted Keith’s