The Bold World Page 11

  A few days before, I had walked into his room and found that his whole body had ballooned and he needed to be drained immediately. The clinic had an all-hands-on-deck ethos, and family members were encouraged to participate in their loved one’s care. We sat on his bed facing each other and I let him lean against my chest while the doctors drew fluids from his lungs, his head slumped over my shoulder like a baby’s. Every time the needle went into his back, I’d tilt my head close to his ear and tell him a story, taking him back to the tennis courts.

  “We’re standing cross-court from our opponent. We have the serve. We’re going to dribble the ball twice, then toss it up. Now arch your racket back—and swing! Run in for a sharp cross-court volley. He can’t get it back. Dribble, dribble, serve. Keep your eye on the opponent, Daddy.”

  Each jolt of pain was a whack of the ball, a sprint down the court.

  “We’re tossing up the ball again. And we’ve slammed it into his backhand. We’re gonna stay at the baseline and nail him with a forehand—swoosh. Now follow through. Get your knees low. Two side steps to the left, get back into center court. He lobs it up. We’re going in for an overhead smash. The point is yours!” I let out a soft raaahh into his ear, imitating the cheer of the crowd.

  The doctor’s work finally done, we laid Daddy on his back and I wiped his forehead with a towel. “That’s my girl,” he sighed without opening his eyes.

  * * *

  —

  We fought death together until I couldn’t take the fight anymore. Worn out and depleted, after three weeks at the clinic I came up with excuses to leave. “Just give me four days,” I told him. “Georgia needs her dad, and I need to tie up work that’s been lingering for weeks.”

  What I didn’t tell him was that I needed to fall apart for a day, needed someone to take Georgia from me so I could break into a million pieces. I wanted to get as far away from that place as possible—where practically everyone was sick, or dying, or dead. Where everyone had a sad story and a sad family member holding on—where I was one of those sad people, too.

  I also didn’t say that I was angry—furious that with all we’d done, all the hours spent on charts and conversations with doctors, all the love around him, he was still dying. The ultimate boss man, the leader, our Black Santa Claus, cut down in the most human of ways, by disease. When I most needed him to be superhuman and pull through, he was going to leave me to deal with my grief alone. He was, at the end of it all, human and finite and vulnerable. And that pissed me off the most. Because it meant the same for me.

  Standing by his bedside, I was quick to assure Daddy that I’d return next week. “I promise, I’ll be back before you know it.” But that slow, unfocused look he gave me before turning away to stare at the clover-leaf tree outside his window told me that he knew, finally, what was coming.

  Less than a week later, my aunt called to tell me that Daddy passed away, shortly after getting his morning massage. One of my sisters and I returned to Germany to cremate him, and we brought his ashes back to the States, to spread across the sea near Long Island.

  The king, our own Black Santa Claus, was dead.

  SIX

  Resurrection

  I WAS THIRTY-TWO WHEN MY FATHER PASSED. His death forced all my little anxieties from childhood to the surface. Independence started to take on an unbearable weight. Smallness dominated my thoughts once again. Any disorder in my life—an uncontrolled emotion swirling around in my head, or even a shoe out of place in the hallway—felt unbearable, like fire to my skin.

  And then there were all the questions that kept circling in my head—about love, faith, even God. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in them anymore. I did. In fact, I fell more in love with my father after he died. The fraught and fractured relationship we had had my whole life fixed itself during those grueling weeks in Bad Aibling. Every bit of anger for him disappeared. The confusion around his chronic heavy-handedness no longer pulled at me. Instead, all I could feel for him was love. A giant-sized, persistent, lonely love. What I did question was the point of it all. Why welcome love when in the end it will be pulled from you and leave you crippled in its absence? If I could have asked for one thing in life at the time, it would have been for the return of my dad. But he was gone.

  And so, as a mere second best, I asked for only a few of Daddy’s things to keep with me: his wooden pipe, still fresh with the scent of tobacco; his worn and faded wallet, full of his IDs; his files—some work, some personal; and a few pieces of art.

  There was one picture I couldn’t stop looking at. I kept it against the wall by the front door of our loft. It was the only piece of valuable art Serge and I owned, yet it sat, unhung, on the floor.

  The serigraph is called Slave Ship, and the artist is Romare Bearden. Taking up much of the serigraph’s canvas is a woman’s face and torso, etched with simple lines. She’s looking off to the side—possibly to the past, maybe toward the future. Next to the woman is an outline of the continent of Africa, just slightly smaller than the woman herself. Also visible are a thin cross, a handful of black and brown male bodies in protest—knives and bats raised high above their heads—and one white man with blood on his chest.

  I remember the evening Mama and Daddy bought Slave Ship; Ramona and I must have been eight and nine at most. It was stunning to me as a young girl, this woman at the center, bigger than an entire continent, bigger than the revolt of men—bigger than anything in her orbit. For years, all through my school days, when I looked up at her hanging on our living room wall, I asked myself, Who is this woman?

  Years later, I discovered that the woman in the painting isn’t a woman after all; he’s Joseph Cinque, a free man who was stolen from Africa and illegally enslaved in 1839, three decades after the transatlantic slave trade was legally abolished. Two years after his enslavement, he was released and allowed to return home to Sierra Leone. It was Cinque’s legal persistence that caused the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that all men held in illegal bondage should be treated as free men.

  “We’re not making a shrine for your dad out of this house, Jodie!” Serge yelled after I’d asked him one day to help me properly hang Dad’s art. I’d never heard him speak to me with such venom. “He was a great man, but we’re not hanging it—not a framed picture of the continent of Africa.” That’s all Serge saw in the art: a continent.

  For me, everything I’d lost when my father died—a patriarch, a Santa Claus, a rebel, a king—seemed to be resting in this frame. The perseverance, the greatness, the active Blackness—were all just sitting there, barely propped up on the floor. If we couldn’t hang this in our home, if we couldn’t pay homage to this Black man and every Black man—my dad included—who fought the battles for our freedom, then nothing would hang on any of my walls. Not the “high art” pictures of women Serge had collected over the years, not the Polaroids he snapped of me and tacked up with pins, not even Georgia’s beautiful princess art. I, we, needed John Patterson’s energy—that Harlem, that Race Man, that hot-tempered, you-can’t-stop-me attitude protecting us. Until all of that was cherished, enshrined, resurrected—nothing had more urgency. Hanging Slave Ship became a declaration.

  If Daddy were alive, he would have told Serge to hang the damn thing and stop getting in the way of our Black pride. Serge, I realized, would never be that kind of king—the kind that protects his family when under siege.

  In those initial months after his death, Dad’s specter hovered over everything around me. He appeared in my sleep, popping up on top of my nightstand, then the dresser, then on the wall behind me like the Cheshire cat with his enigmatic smile. As the executor of Dad’s will, I resurrected him every time I pulled a piece of paper from one of his files—a newspaper clipping, a business contract, a to-do list scrawled on the back of a receipt. I held on to his things and strategically placed them around me—the credit cards, the cuff links, the handkerchiefs, the walle
t, the tobacco-scented pipe—wanting to be near little reminders of him, touching the things that he had touched each day.

  In the presence of those reminders, resentment trickled in. I became furious over the loss. Angry about the investment I’d made in our relationship—livid that all the love I felt for him now had no place to go. I stopped the activity of love, and I started pulling away from everyone, closing door after door on family and friends, retreating inward.

  My mom would call for weeks at a time trying to reach me, and I’d never pick up or return her calls. I’d watch the phone ring and it would send a wave of panic through my body. I imagined her watching me watching the ringing phone, and I’d feel exposed. I’d try moving the phone out of sight, but the ringing just continued—first her, then an auntie, then a sister, then Mom again. The phone became my enemy, the thing that allowed others to get close to me. I just wanted to be invisible, to curl up and sleep. Needing it all to stop, I sent my mother an email one day that very simply said “I don’t like talking on the phone. Just email me if you have anything important to say, and I’ll get back to you.”

  At work, I could barely concentrate. The marble desk I once worked from for hours, brainstorming, writing press releases, reaching out to editors, planning photoshoots, now felt like a cold, blank space. My enthusiasm dwindled and so did my clients—my steady flow of jobs had trickled down to two.

  “Let me get back to you next week,” I’d answer when they’d request my standard weekly update. “I’m a little under the weather today.”

  Clients seemed silly and self-indulgent, friends seemed selfish and unaware. Only Georgie, my Ladybug, brought the faintest reminder of possibility to my days. She was my only reason to get up in the morning. Georgia needed to be taken to music class, or spun around at the park, or read to or fed or hugged or tucked in. Aside from those moments, I felt zero attachment to anything.

  “Jodie, I have a doctor who can help you,” my mom wrote to me three or so months after Daddy passed, catching me off guard. “I’m fine,” I responded, then moved her message out of sight to the Mom folder on my computer.

  Another message, an hour later. “Well at least call her, she’s cured a lot of people. Dr. Queen can cure any ailment, whatever it is. All you need to do is send a photo of yourself and she processes it through her computerized system and it cleanses your energy…”

  It felt as though my mother was always selling me something. One year it was the mattress that had done wonders for her back, “only three thousand dollars.” Another year it was herbs that helped when she was sick. And now, to cure my grief, it was this “soul work” that her doctor could do with a photograph. I didn’t need a mattress or a Photoshopped picture to save me. What I needed was control over my life. My mind kept returning to my father—if nothing else, he knew about control.

  I found myself, in those months, looking only for grounding. For something to tie me, hold me down—like a weight on top of paper in a windstorm. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t helping; it offered too much looseness. While before I thought that running my own show was what I needed for my happiness, in my current state of grief, it gave me too much slack: I could choose to work or sleep in, to take on another client or no clients at all. I had no boss, no structure, no deadlines other than the ones I agreed to—and to date I wasn’t agreeing to much of anything.

  Serge, I decided, couldn’t solve the problem, either.

  “Could we actually not go to dinner tonight?” We were sitting in the back of a taxi, heading downtown after seeing a show at Lincoln Center. I was turned away from him, ignoring his hand on my leg. Serge didn’t attempt to answer. “A friend is in town,” I continued, still looking out the window. “We’re gonna grab a drink and catch up.” Serge mumbled his disappointment and we drove down Broadway in silence.

  We scheduled couples therapy, but Serge regularly called ten minutes into the session, saying he couldn’t get away from work, leaving me on the couch to fill up the next fifty minutes by myself. I arrived hours late or not at all to his restaurant/store/bar openings. Time and time again, we were both halfway showing up in each other’s lives.

  In more obvious ways I avoided intimacy. Come home late, climb into bed, find the farthest corner from him on our king-sized mattress, turn my back, fake sleep. Every night we fell asleep on opposite ends of the bed, without saying a word, not even good night.

  The end was coming—had already come. By the summer of 2001, Serge reluctantly moved out. This time the breakup was for good.

  After our separation, Georgia and I existed lockstep, as a single unit: eating together, sleeping together, reading books on the floor together. We ordered takeout from our favorite spot, eating rotisserie chicken dipped in salt and pepper while sitting cross-legged on a pink picnic blanket spread across my bed. We laughed and sang and snuggled, all while I quietly panicked inside.

  Many nights I’d lie awake, mind racing with thoughts of Dad, and then my uncle, his brother Raymond, who’d passed in the month that followed Germany. Sometimes I’d tell myself that I had to step up, now that the men were gone, and be that strong figure our family needed so badly. I’d imagine what that would require of me, then break down in tears, knowing I was in no shape to lead anyone. I scribbled down meandering thoughts on loose paper during those nights, then tucked the pages away under the mattress or in an old purse, secret places where no one would find them, not even myself. I prayed for something to change, for someone to come into my life and fix things.

  * * *

  —

  Just as my last few Jodie Becker Media jobs were winding down, I got a call from a friend of mine who was the publisher of VIBE magazine, the bible of urban culture. He was reaching out to me about a sales job he thought I’d be perfect for. He was impressed by my work with D’Angelo, my PR company, and all that I’d contributed to Joe’s Pub.

  “I’ve been watching you for the past three years, Jo. What you’re doing…it’s hot. And important—people listen to what you have to say.”

  My friend went on and on for an hour, refusing to get off the phone until I at least agreed to consider his offer. The truth was, I felt stuck, weighted, and direly in need of a reset. This job could be the switch I needed—more than I would allow myself to realize.

  Three weeks later, I took the job at the magazine as the director of fashion sales, even though it would mean having to get a part-time nanny for Georgia. Georgia was older now, and I felt she (and I) could handle the separation. The upside—and it was big—was that the job offered a steady and substantial paycheck, a great title, the stamp of an established team, and fabulous work trips to Milan. To top it all off, I had an office. I felt that the dream I’d had as a kid was being realized—of being an executive in a Donna Karan suit, sitting in her own office, ready for anything that might be thrown her way.

  I took the job despite knowing the obstacles I’d face tackling new and unfamiliar territory. In fact, I took it specifically because it was all new and unknown. The people, the requirements, the deadlines, the pressure—I knew none of it was going to be easy, but I welcomed the challenge. And still feeling fragile and untethered from loss—of my father and his brother, and of my marriage—I liked what VIBE offered: stability, community, and commitment.

  The exterior of it all was very beautiful—I was invited into luxe conference rooms overlooking Madison Avenue, where chilled water was presented to me in Baccarat crystal, and I dressed up daily in high heels, statement bags, cashmere, cashmere, and more cashmere. But the hard truth was that the job was hard—grueling—with demands and requirements that I hadn’t yet mastered as an entrepreneur. We were required to go on sales calls each week, and no matter the state of my nerves, I was forced to present the magazine, all by myself, to the most critical people—the fashion-folk.

  “As you can see from the pie chart”—I pointed to papers spread out on the tabl
e in front of us—“VIBE’s audience is made up of urban trendsetters. Our median income is Blah. Our racial demographic is Blah-Blah, and despite turns in the economy, this group never shies away from purchasing luxury items.” I sounded like a tape recording. My success at the job depended on my being vivacious and clever, bringing to life the nuances of our readers, a relatively misunderstood group of dynamic young urbanites. It was up to me to help established fashion brands like Chanel and Ralph Lauren see our readers as viable customers, and then to persuade them to advertise in our magazine, for the big bucks.

  It was difficult explaining how this particular person, the VIBE reader—who had a modest income of maybe forty thousand dollars—would, without hesitation, spend their money on luxury items time and time again. It was also difficult explaining the urban mindset to suburbanites. And it was even more difficult for me to muster enough confidence and conviction to convince anyone of anything at that time. Although I dressed the part of a smart and together businesswoman, I was still stuck in my grief, falling apart inside. I stumbled and fumbled and flatlined each week, then licked my wounds and started all over again Monday morning.

  “Jodie, do you want to walk Deborah through the presentation we made for her? I think she’ll like what we pulled together.” Three months into the job, Carolyn, my boss, had decided to sit in on all my presentations for the day, there only to “assist and help if need be.” I hated when she did that.