By the Light of My Father's Smile (16 page)

No, I said, laughing. She was white. The daughter of Eastern European immigrants who were as racist as if they were homegrown. But she wasn't like them. She was married and had children of her own; she wanted them to know that Gypsies, who were the niggers of the old country, and colored people were okay. She tried to prepare me for childbirth. It's rough, she said, don't underestimate it. It wasn't that I underestimated it, I knew the damage childbearing had done to my mother's body; I just couldn't bear to think about it happening to me. I liked sports. I liked playing basketball and even football with the boys. I was still doing this in my eighth month. She said: Lily Pauline, you can't keep doing this; your belly's sticking out to here.

I couldn't see it, though. As far as I was concerned, I hadn't put a baby in there, I kind of dared one to be coming out.

Very logical, said Susannah, smiling.

It wasn't really, I know that now. Sometimes I see young pregnant women coming into the restaurant. They carry themselves just the way I did. As if their bodies are still under their control; as if nothing has changed in their world. I don't know what I thought would happen. Gena's husband, Richard, used to ask me questions about the baby: What will you name it? Where will it sleep? Do you have a bassinet? I had nothing, of course, only the
bed I shared with two siblings. As for naming, there was no one I cared enough about to name a child after. In the event, I named my son Richard, since he was the only person, other than his wife, who'd inquired about him.

And did Richard ever find out about you and his wife?

I don't know. He didn't learn anything from me; that's for sure. Maybe Gena told him. I can't think why she would. She never left him, and always maintained he was a good man. I agreed. Besides, our affair wasn't like any affair you're likely to read about in
Playboy.
It had this incredible nurturing quality; it was the kind of affectionate sex that seemed designed to reconnect me to myself, to keep me alive. However, it was passionate enough so that I learned about orgasms. And once I learned that I could have them, and have them easily, I realized that in at least that one area I was free.

Susannah was sympathetically stroking my knee. That's a thought not often heard, she said.

I know, I said, because the idea of a personal freedom for slaves (which I considered myself) has always been posited as spiritual. That's the freedom my parents tried to sell me. When I tried to commit suicide by ineffectually slicing my wrists, they hauled me off to church. By then I didn't trust them anymore. Nothing they could have proposed would have interested me. The piety of their religion least of all.

I sat there in the second pew looking up at the minister and wondering what he knew about orgasms, whether he had them regularly. Whether he knew, in the biblical sense, the women who frequently moaned and groaned and fainted in front of him at church. I'm sure now that he did, I said.

Orgasmic freedom has been a male right, said Susannah, with any woman they've wanted to fuck, since the beginning of patriarchy.

It is a very great freedom, I said. Once I experienced it, I felt I had been reborn. Now, when Winston hammered away on top of me I thought of myself as a castle with a thick iron door against which his puny member was useless. And then, with Gena, one kiss, the slightest, most feathery breath, opened me like a rose. It was magic, and I was eager to discover if anyone I knew shared it.

And did they? asked Susannah.

For the most part, no, I said. Which puzzled me. Married women I haltingly queried didn't have it. My older sisters didn't have it. My neighbors' daughters didn't have it. And so on. They had the yearning for it, they ached for it, they pleaded and begged for it, they listened to songs that described and promised it, but generally speaking, orgasmic freedom was not something you could assume was had by every brightly painted, sensuously scented woman walking down the street. This was a revelation. That I, lowly me, somehow had this precious thing. I knew instantly what it meant. It meant I was not forgotten by Creation; it meant that I was passionately, immeasurably loved. I started right away to plan my escape.

What kind of cakes did you first make? asked Susannah.

Lemon, I said. The yellow of the lemon cheered me and made my customers think of sunshine and a better life. My door, you recall, was painted yellow also. After the lemon I made German chocolate and caramel, which is an old traditional favorite among people from the South.

And your pies?

Berries, I said. Yams. I learned everything I needed to know from having watched my mother, but also from Gena, who introduced me to cookbooks. In the beginning, when things were warm and electric between us, she helped me cook. My little brothers were my salesmen and each day fanned out across our neighborhood after school. This was before drugs were imported
and sold that way. I paid them a dime for each cake they sold; I paid my mother for the use of her stove. I had to purchase all my ingredients out of baby-sitting money. Even so, my profits slowly mounted.

Susannah laughed. A born capitalist!

No, I said. A born survivalist. Gena found out about a program for college-bound slow learners that she recommended me for; it was in another part of town. I wasn't a slow learner, but so far behind in my studies I might as well have been. The program was the only thing that stood between me and being on the street. I went to class at night. I made it to City College in a couple of years. In college I studied business. Eventually I graduated, joined the Navy, got out, worked in restaurants, bought my first restaurant. The rest, as they say, is herstory.

In the Navy, I tell Susannah, I learned definitively that our country is doomed.

Why is that? she asks, though we have discussed my military career many times.

In the military there is no respect for women. No respect for the feminine, whatsoever. And no respect for anyone who is not white. It is as if the world were made entirely for the pleasure of white males, and that is how they behave. I felt completely unsafe among the men designated to protect our country. Some of their orgies and rapes have since become known, though many of their more despicable acts will never be made public. I was lucky to get out alive.

And how did you? she asks.

By reading novels, going to movies whenever I got the chance, and planning a future for my son. My son, who thought he was my brother, because that is what he was told after I left.

My husband, Petros, was responsible for my first visit to Lily Paul's, an upscale organic soul food restaurant that he'd discovered through friends.

You're not going to believe what I've found, he said to me.

Is it bigger than a breadbox? I asked, laughing.

Yes, he said. Much.

It was.

Lily Paul's was all ferns and gilded mirrors, chandeliers and parquet floors. However, on each and every table there was the same cabbage-rose oilcloth that was on his parents' table in Greece and framed, one tiny square, neatly on my wall.

I laughed when we sat down.

How's that for a surprise! he said, turning pink with pleasure at my joy.

It's wonderful! I said, laughing into his eyes.

Perhaps tonight would end the way our nights out used to end, I thought. We'd eat a good dinner, drink a bottle or two of wine. Ogle each other across the guttering candle, play footsie under
the table with our stockinged feet. Embrace as we left the establishment. Make love all night long. We needed this to happen. We prayed it would. It did not.

What'll you have? asked a sexy woman with spiky silver hair.

My wife, answered Petros.

Not a bad choice, said the woman, grinning.

The smile left Petros's face immediately. But the woman and I maintained our merry mood.

Halfway through a delicious dinner, I felt it only cultured to thank her for the food and to formally introduce myself. What is your name? I asked.

I'm Lily Paul, she said. I own the joint.

Oh, I said, impressed. I'm Susannah Robinson and this is my husband, Petros.

How do you do, she said.

He was not doing well. A pall seemed to have dropped over his head.

What's the matter? I asked, as Lily Paul went to tally our check.

Dykes, he said. Their boldness takes my appetite away.

Do you think she's a dyke? I asked. What makes you think so?

He rolled his eyes. Be serious, Susannah, he said. Look at how she carries herself.

Lily Paul was sauntering back to our table, smiling and chatting with customers who stopped her along the way. Her silver hair radiant under the lights. She looks like she doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks, I said, studying her. Is it that that makes her a dyke?

Oh, be quiet, he said. Then, pleasantly, to Lily Paul, he said: A nice place you have here. With a big grin.

She slipped me her card, and didn't answer.

Two weeks later, I called her.

How are you? I asked.

I'm suffering like hell from menopause, was her blunt response.

Oh, I said, what are the symptoms? Hoping I was not to hear a sad tale about the demise of sexual desire.

Just the usual, she said: hot flashes, migraines, mood swings, bodily aches and pains. Oh, she said, and my girlfriend doesn't want to have sex as much as I do.

I brightened. Shall I come over, I said, and massage your scalp? I've heard that helps.

My scalp belongs to my girlfriend at the moment, just as I'm sure your fingers are in the keeping of your cute husband. He is cute, you know. Something of a phony, though, I thought.

This was such an accurate reading of Petros it made me laugh.

You've got a nice laugh, she said. And you've damn sure got a pretty throat.

I like your silver hair, I said.

We have two places to start, she said.

What do you mean? I asked.

When we make love, she said, we have two places to start: my hair and your throat.

Two weeks later, that is what we did.

Dear Favorite Tourist, the letter began. It was written on the thinnest tissue paper, blue, with a thin, nearly transparent red line running along one side. It smelled of myrrh.

I am writing to you because you were so kind as to give me your address and also because it is true: of all the tourists who have come to visit the Greek dwarf over the years, slyly poking their noses into a misery they do not comprehend, you are my favorite. Is it because you are so brown and so tall? Because your hair coils on the back of your neck like that of a Greek goddess? Or is it because you were someone from far away who joined herself willingly to the unknown, to my poor country, and to my poor country folk? That you came to see me not once, or even twice, as real tourists do, but every day until you left to go home to America? That we became friends?

America. Is it not where everyone wants to be? And is it not paradise?

At this, Susannah sipped her Campari, kicked off her slingback pumps, allowed her silky black dress to slip off one deeply browned shoulder, and said to herself, as she settled on a wicker chair in the sunroom: No. No, America is not paradise. This sun-room is, though.

I am writing to tell you stupendous news, the letter continued.

I have left my home, the church! It happened in a way never imagined. Do you recall how I was daydreaming about Gypsies? Pygmies also, but Gypsies, definitely. Well, as life would have it, all of my brothers, to whom my father left his immense fortune, died. Well, they were old men, and it was time. Nothing was left for me, chained as I was to the church. Only after all of them, seven, had died, would I inherit. I wasn't expected to live so long. But live I did. And so, there I sat one day, lolling on a pile of money, when a Gypsy caravan came by. Caravans of this sort, a long line of small, brightly painted wooden houses on wheels, had of course come by my dwelling before; but that was during the years before the war. During the war it was as if Gypsies simply disappeared. Remembered for their tinkering and music and bright, exotic clothing, or for their thieving, lying, and treachery, depending on whom you were talking to. I had the same fear of Gypsies that everyone else had, because their wandering, disorderly ways were regularly, when I was a girl, denounced in our church. So for years I would duck inside my room, lock my door with a beating heart, and peek at them from behind my red curtains. This time, though, I did nothing of the sort. I am by now so old, I thought, what difference would it make if they stole my dinner, stole my money, or even if they stole me? I listened to the little bells that jingled on the red-tasseled reins of their horses; they seemed to be calling out an invitation. To tell the truth, I was beginning to be bored. Learning languages and reading people's
faces on television can be done in any prison. Placing my tiny derringer in a holster that fitted my armpit, I leaned out to meet the most colorfully dressed people I'd ever seen. The men wore fuzzy black hats and embroidered velvet vests. The women wore long flowery skirts, and gold coins in their long hair. They did not seem too surprised to see me, actually. They explained that they were on a pilgrimage that reenacted their former way of life. That they had built and painted the wagons of the caravan themselves, and that they were still practicing the songs and music of their ancestors that they had but recently learned. The older women, some of them professionals—schoolteachers, doctors, and so on, in the city—and I were soon telling each other's fortunes, the men were whittling wooden spoons and drinking plum wine, a cup of which was offered to me, and the children were running wild through the cemetery and drawing cartoons on the white stones. As my old eyes began to take in all this unexpected experience, new life began to stir in this elderly frame. I found myself swaying to the most soulful Gypsy music; I began, tottering at first, then finding my own rhythm, to dance. When you have never danced before, especially if you have never danced before with others, it is like beginning to fly. Taking my red curtains, which the Gypsy women liked, and just a satchel of my small clothes and a belt of money, I locked the door of the church and went off with them!