his head on her arm. They looked bizarre, like some mismatched May–December couple.
“Aren’t you gonna give me some sugar?” Nona asked, leaning her face toward mine. She was my mother’s sister-girl from eons ago. She was clad from head wrap to toe ring in African accessories.
“Nice to see you, Mizz Nona.” I pecked her cheek warily. My mother had met Nona back in the day on the first Sailing with Soul Cruise on the Mexican Riviera. They’d been friends ever since. Though I sometimes liked spending time with the two of them, tonight I wanted to be alone to replay my rendezvous with Cait.
“We picked this up for you; some nice man was selling them on the street,” my mother said, handing me a small, old-fashioned straw broom with a carved tree-limb handle.
“Thanks, Mom, Nona, I’ll pass this along to Cinderella, so she can use it to sweep our hearth,” I said as I stood the broom against the corner of the end table.
“Ha, ha, dear. Of course that’s for you to jump over. At your wedding. To Keith. Your fiancé. Now let’s get out our calendars and set some dates.” My mother, Nona and Keith looked up at me expectantly.
“WE aren’t setting any dates, Mother,” I said, nudging the broom with my foot and knocking it to the floor. “Keith and I will choose a date, and we’ll let you know. When WE are ready. Right, Keith?” I shifted my eyes toward him without turning my head.
“Angela, do not speak to your mother in that disrespectful way!” Keith’s voice was full of affront. He poked his head around my mother’s hair and glared at me.
“Mrs. Wright is a big girl; she can take care of herself. Don’t be a suck-up. She doesn’t need you to defend her.” My mood was worsening. I hated this pressure.
Feeling bullied and bulldozed by my mother had long been a source of irritation. I had gone into journalism because of her. Like everyone else, I was in awe of her—her bravery, her convictions and her activism. But rather than paying my dues as a reporter as my mother continually urged me, I had balked at her pressure. Instead, I had allowed myself to be recruited by the glitzy Brice-Castle human resources department as part of the “diversity initiative” and went to work for Lucia at Désire.
Did I really enjoy being the eyes and ears for Lucia’s sex-ploits? Not always, but I had become extremely skilled at standing perfectly still. I was the “I-shall-not-be-moved” girl, giving no ground to my mother and her thinly veiled disappointment that I wasn’t “living up to my potential.” She had always pushed me, propelling me toward the next level—the one she wanted me to reach.
In kindergarten, she had rushed me to read, sinking her top teeth into the fleshy part of her bottom lip to fight back impatience as I struggled, slowly and painfully, through endless Amelia Bedelia easy-reader books. But the more she pushed me toward excellence, the more determined I became to hover around just-slightly-above-average. I felt she was pushing me not ahead, but away. I watched as she drummed her fingers as I dutifully recited the events of my day and scratched out addition and subtraction problems, eager for me to fall asleep so she could move on to bigger things—making the world a better place for millions of black women having bad hair days.
I had long ago stopped trying to keep up with her brisk, clipped pace. I fought back with inertia. My mother and I were stuck in some kind of dance of control, only I had willed my feet to stop moving. She could not make me set that damn date. And for a different reason, neither could Keith.
“Kids, kids, now shush,” Nona said, waving her mannish hands in front of her. “Get me some more of this fine Courvoisier, would you, Angela baby?” She pushed her empty snifter toward me.
“Angela, Nona was just telling us about her upcoming lecture at your mother’s church,” Keith said, taking a sip of his drink and glaring at me. I stood up, and carried the decanter into our kitchen/alcove at the far side of the room.
“I know you’ve got a man, but I’d love for you to attend one of my workshops, dear,” said Nona, raising her voice to make sure I had heard her.
In her Too Black, Too Strong lectures, Nona chided women—who were petrified by the constant threat of the black male-female ratios—for being too career-focused and scaring away black men. On her popular Too Black, Too Strong AM radio show, Nona reminded her listeners that while “career success is all that, you can’t get ahead if you leave your man behind.” Her favorite quip was “take a break from the fast track and spend more time on your back.” She was Helen Gurley “Black” toting a “Sex and the Unhappily Single Black Girl” line. Nona’s dirty-girl lectures were standing room only, and she was on the verge of signing a book deal.
“Nona, no disrespect, but as a feminist—” I began, my voice rising to meet hers.
“Child, please. Black women don’t need none of that; that’s for the white girls,” she said, kicking off one shoe and tucking her leg under the folds of her wrap skirt. “Sisters don’t have the luxury of being mad at our men. We have to stick by them for the good of the community. Black men have been beaten down by the white man. We have to support them, build them up, not tear them down.”
“I hear you, sis,” my mother chimed in. “Besides, I’m not burning this bra—I paid good money for it.” They slapped five at the old, stale joke.
“Keith, help me here.” I glowered at him, exasperated.
“Well, whites do accept you sisters more easily,” Keith said. He took another swallow of his drink, raising his chin as though he were in front of a class. How dare he slide into Professor Redfield mode? “They’re afraid of black masculinity. You know, intimidated by our walk, our strength and even our voices.”
“Not to mention your big black you-know-whats.” My mother caught Nona’s eye and they both dissolved in hysterical laughter.
“Mom, Mizz Nona, come on!” As they continued to laugh, I opened the bottom cabinet and pushed aside the fifty-dollar bottle of Courvoisier VSOP Keith and I had bought at duty free on our way back from a long weekend in Puerto Rico. I pulled out a twelve-dollar liter of E&J from the package store around the corner, and quickly poured it into the decanter. No business wasting the good stuff on tacky Mizz Nona.
“As soon as black women leave our men and join up with the white women’s libbers, you know what happens?” Nona continued, holding out her glass. “Some white woman turns around and snatches up the brother.”
“Yep, that other white meat,” my mother said under her breath, nodding.
“Besides, you know, most of those so-called feminists are lezzies—except for the ones who are stealing our men.” Nona shook her head so vigorously that her earrings, shaped like “the Motherland,” clattered loudly. My mother nodded in agreement.
“I hate the word “lezzzbian,” my mother said, finishing off her brandy and slamming down the snifter on a coaster.
“Mother!” Though I wanted to make her shut up, I didn’t like the word either. It sounded sordid, like a part of the female anatomy you weren’t supposed to say out loud. I thought of my sexy banter with Cait earlier in the evening, and knew that this conversation was too close to home.
“Mom, please stop sounding so narrow-minded—you have gay friends. What about that guy, Aaron, who did your TV makeup for so many years? Or Donny, your hairdresser?”
“As the Bible says, ‘love the sinner, hate the sin,’” Nona added before my mother could answer. “But please. I am so sick and tired of hearing about gay people.”
“Uh-huh,” my mother chimed in.
“They have a choice,” Nona continued, adjusting her head wrap. “They can choose to be gay or not, and even if they are gay, they can choose to pass.”
“How are we going to hide this chocolate skin, this hair?” my mother said, grabbing a handful.
“As black as I am, I know I can’t pass.” Mizz Nona and my mother