Babylon Sisters Read online

  B.J. looked at Louis and then back at me, sipping my wine and staying under radar. “We’re done negotiating. I just need to see if it’s okay with Catherine.”

  Louis and Amelia both turned toward me, as surprised as I was. For my part, I choked on my wine, which wasn’t very cool, but what kind of question was that? I hadn’t even had a chance to adjust to his being here for a few weeks. Now he was ready to move into Louis’s house, right around the corner, and put down roots. My so-called friends were boxing me in on all sides, and I didn’t appreciate it. Not only that, I didn’t know how to get out of it. Three pairs of eyes were trained on me like I had the answer to the last question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

  “You okay?” Amelia said when I stopped coughing. She looked concerned, like I might jump up and run out the back door before she could talk me out of it.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” B.J. said apologetically.

  “You didn’t scare me; you surprised me. What do I have to do with it?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t want to do it if you didn’t think it was a good idea.”

  He didn’t say why I might not think it was a good idea. He didn’t have to. Phoebe might as well have been curled up on those floor pillows, hugging her knees and waiting to see what I might say next, but Amelia stepped in and saved me like the good friend she is.

  “Well, whether she does or whether she doesn’t, I’ve got dinner on the table,” she said, slipping her arm around my waist. “And around here nobody has to agree to anything on an empty stomach.”

  41

  Dinner was wonderful. There was no more discussion about where I stood on the Sentinel’s star reporter, but I can’t deny that my brain was busily considering the question like there was going to be a pop quiz between dessert (a wonderful lemon tart) and coffee (a strong Cuban blend that we drank from little white cups like B.J.’s espresso the first night we had dinner). Amelia and Louis kept the conversation light and lively, with occasional, more substantive forays into world events and local politics.

  For his part, B.J. was a good storyteller. All of his adventures weren’t as harrowing as the one he’d told to me. His descriptions of the swarms of golden butterflies he encountered in Colombia were like something out of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez, and his time spent with Buddhist monks in a place outside of Paris called Plum Village made me wish he actually would write the book people kept asking him about.

  “You’ve been in such beautiful places,” Amelia said. “I envy you your travels.”

  “The sad thing is,” B.J. said, “that most of the time I was there to cover some kind of conflict. At first it was disconcerting. I couldn’t get used to the juxtaposition of so much beauty and so much violence. Then one day my editor got tired of me going on and on about it, and she said, ‘Would you like it better if the place where they were fighting was ugly?’ Which is the real question, I guess. Not where the war is, but why there are wars at all.”

  Nobody said anything to that, since we knew it was a serious, but rhetorical question. There are always a million answers—the generals and the rebels make sure of that—but when you really think about it, there’s no good reason to try to kill as many people as you can, for as long as you can, until the ones who are left surrender their lives, or their resources, or their culture, or their self-respect, or their ancestors, or their spirits, or their oil, until they get strong enough to throw you off their backs and the whole cycle starts all over again. Thinking about it can make you feel powerless and scared, and that was no way to end an evening that had evolved into one of the best I’ve had in too long.

  “Do you remember that old song,” I said to Louis, “where the guy has a dream about all the soldiers refusing to fight another war? My mother used to sing it.”

  Louis shook his head, frowning. “I don’t think so.”

  “I remember it,” B.J. said. “She sang it to me when I was interviewing all those Vietnam vets.”

  “That’s right. She was talking about the march on the Pentagon.”

  “Sing it,” said Amelia.

  “I don’t remember all the words,” I said. “What’s the first line?”

  B.J. grinned a little sheepishly. “I’m a better writer than I am a singer.”

  “My mother said it’s the spirit that counts when you’re trying to end a war,” I said. “Not whether or not you sing on key.”

  He took a deep breath and started singing in a strong, clear baritone voice that would have guaranteed him regular solos in any church choir in Atlanta. “ ‘Last night I had the strangest dream . . .’ ”

  He might as well have handed me the sheet music. In just those few words it all came back like a childhood memory, including the harmony, which my mom always sang in her lovely alto. I looked at him and fell right in.

  “ ‘. . . I’ve never had before. I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.’ ”

  Our voices got stronger as we went along, and the words I forgot, he remembered, until we got through the whole thing, and by the last note of our impromptu duet, whatever defenses I had left were gone. I loved this man and always would. I loved his mind and his heart and his stories and his secrets and his promise to make it right. I wanted that to be my promise, too. I might not be able to stop a war, but I can sure declare a cease-fire until we get some peace talks going.

  “It’s all right with me,” I said to B.J., as if he had just articulated his relocation question. “About you coming to work for the Sentinel, I mean.”

  I could practically hear Louis holding his breath and Amelia sending up a little prayer.

  “Well,” B.J. said softly, “can I take that as a yes?”

  42

  Once Louis and B.J. shook hands to seal the deal, Amelia opened a bottle of champagne and another of sparkling cider, so we could toast this new partnership that was going to drag all of us, some kicking and screaming more than others, into the next phase of our lives. Sure, I was nervous, but I felt strangely relieved, like when you finally break down and go have a physical. You’re still worried at some level about the outcome, but once you hop up on that table, you’ve set things in motion and there’s no turning back.

  It was getting late and B.J. had an early flight. He declined Louis’s offer to take him back to his hotel, since our favorite editor was above the legal limit, but acquiesced to Amelia’s request that he not take the train so late at night. The compromise was that Amelia would call a cab and I would walk B.J. past the pool so he could see the restoration and then wait with him out front until the cab came.

  Of course, this was Amelia’s way of giving us a moment to ourselves, and we took it, wending our way down the path through Amelia’s rose garden until it opened out into the mermaid’s domain. The people who sold the house to Amelia had neglected the pool for years, and the last time B.J. saw it, there were leaves and fetid water in the bottom, a ripped canvas hanging over the top, and many missing tiles around the edges. Now he stopped at a beautiful little oasis where swimmers and supplicants could pay homage to the mermaid and renew themselves.

  The lights were on in the pool, but not around it, so the rippling water gave off an almost otherworldly aquamarine glow. B.J. walked slowly to the pool’s edge and looked down. I stood beside him, but not too close.

  “I remember you talking about this mermaid,” he said. “She looks exactly like you described her.”

  “Amelia and Jason did a great job. They did it all themselves over the better part of a year.”

  “He sounds like a good kid.”

  “He’s great,” I said, bragging like I was his mother and feeling a sudden, almost overpowering urge to tell him about his own great kid. I repressed it, watching the mermaid listening to her shell and hating my own cowardice.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” B.J. said. “But I think I still make you a little uncomfortable.”

  I looked at him. “Things have been moving pretty fast ar
ound here since you showed up.”

  “Shall we slow them down just a little bit?”

  “That might be a good idea.”

  “All right,” he said, and turned toward me with a little bow and a smile. “May I have this dance?”

  I was totally up for some romantic role-playing. “Is it a slow dance?”

  “The slowest.”

  “But there’s no music,” I said, moving into his arms, but keeping my distance. The nuns used to tell my Catholic girlfriends to always leave room for the Holy Ghost between them and their dancing partners. I left enough space for the Holy Trinity.

  He looked down at me and grinned. “Then I guess we’ll have to sing.”

  “Okay. Pick a tune.”

  We were already doing a little swaying thing to the music in our heads, so it didn’t really matter. Pretending to dance gave us an excuse to be in each other’s arms at the end of a long, strange night. He could have said “America the Beautiful,” and I would have hit it.

  “I think I’ve done all the singing I can do in one night.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’m a world-class whistler.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked at me around the Holy Ghost. “That’s something I didn’t know about you.”

  “There’s lots of things you don’t know about me.”

  “That’s part of your charm,” B.J. said softly. “You’re a woman of mystery.”

  You have no idea, I thought. We were moving around in perfect sync, although we hadn’t named a song yet. Even after all these years and all these tears, we were still so physically in tune with each other it was like slow dancing with your shadow. I hoped he wouldn’t hate me when I told him the truth. All I could do was hope for the best, but for right now, I disregarded the nuns like a true mermaid-worshiping pagan and laid my cheek on B.J.’s chest so he could kiss the top of my head like he always used to, which, of course, he did immediately. We stopped moving then and just stood there looking at each other.

  “Can I come in?” he said softly.

  “No,” I whispered. “Too many ghosts.”

  “I’m not a ghost, Cat.”

  He didn’t feel like a ghost. “I know.”

  From out front, I heard the cab blow its horn.

  B.J. smiled at me. “Saved by the bell.”

  I smiled back and we stepped away from each other.

  “Can we get together when I come back?” he said as we walked together down the front walk where the big yellow cab was waiting.

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Good,” he said, opening the door as the bored-looking driver smothered a yawn. For us, this could be the start of something. For him, it was just the end of another long night. “I’m sure there’s a ghost-free zone around here someplace.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said, stepping back from the curb as the cab pulled off into the darkness. I watched it until it turned the corner, and in the quiet I began whistling just loud enough for me to hear.

  Last night I had the strangest dream, I never had before. . . .

  And you know what? I might not be world-class, but I wasn’t half-bad.

  I dreamed the world had all agreed, to put an end to war. . . .

  43

  The next morning, the phone woke me up early, and I found myself hoping it was B.J. to tell me he’d enjoyed our dance last night as much as I had. “Hello?”

  “Am I speaking with Catherine Sanderson?”

  The man’s tone, an unappealing mixture of nervous and imperious jolted me awake. I didn’t know anybody who routinely spoke like a disapproving potentate.

  “This is Ms. Sanderson. To whom am I speaking?”

  The only time I ever say to whom is when I’m trying to be snotty. This guy’s voice brought that out in me immediately.

  “My name is Robert Mayson, and I got a letter asking me to take a . . . a test . . . to establish—”

  Oh, no! I had thought my interaction with Phoebe’s fantasy fathers was over, but apparently this one had been lollygagging around and was just making contact. Robert Mayson’s name didn’t ring a bell, and I didn’t want it to.

  “Excuse me for interrupting you, Mr. Mayson, but I can spare us both any further embarrassment,” I said, talking over his sputtering. “I know you are not my daughter’s father, and pretty soon she’s going to know it, too, so you won’t be hearing from her again.”

  He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God! You have really taken a load off my mind.”

  “Sorry for your inconvenience,” I said.

  “Inconvenient is what it would be, too,” he said. “I’m getting ready to go into politics, and I can’t afford to have any skeletons rattling around in my closet, if you know what I mean.”

  “I understand. Well, good-bye then and—”

  “Hold on a second,” he said, sounding less nervous and more bossy. “I need to ask you a couple of questions, if you’ve got a minute.”

  My heart sank. I felt like Al Pacino in The Godfather scene that guy on The Sopranos likes to imitate. Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. “Yes?”

  “Why did she think it might be me? Forgive me if this sounds awful, but I don’t even remember you.”

  I didn’t remember him either, so we were even. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t hear from us again.”

  “I have no reason not to believe you,” he said.

  There was a but hanging in the air like a birthday piñata.

  “But I’m still going to have to ask you to sign a notorized statement to the effect that I am not your child’s father.”

  “A what?”

  “My campaign manager says it’s the only way to be sure I’m not vulnerable to any kind of blackmail. Politics is a rough business.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I couldn’t be more serious.”

  If I was looking for a sign, this was it, as big as Halley’s comet. “Listen, what’s your name? Robert? That won’t be necessary. I’m not a blackmailer and I’m not a politician.”

  “Then you refuse to sign?”

  He wasn’t listening. “The only way this is going to be a problem for you is if you ever call this number again. Do I make myself clear?”

  I only say do I make myself clear when I’m being really snotty, and I was. This guy could go ahead and be elected president, for all I cared. The only thing I knew for sure was that the next time I laid eyes on Burghardt Johnson, I was going to tell him about his daughter. Enough is enough.

  44

  The Atlanta Association of Black Journalists’ annual awards dinner is always a glittering, formal affair, held in the ballroom of a downtown hotel, where the black press turns out en masse to honor their own. It also draws a lot of politicians, advertisers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. In addition to being a gathering where you are certain to run into lots of old friends, it is also a hotbed of gossip and innuendo where rumors are disseminated and dissected with lightning speed. Anyone who wanted to get the word out about any- and everything could simplify the process by coming to this event and dropping a few exclusive tidbits into a few attentive ears. There are usually at least two or three hot items making the rounds before the cocktail hour is over, and another three or four by the time everybody gets situated at their assigned tables. But tonight there was only one thing buzzing around in every conversation: Burghardt Johnson was writing for the Sentinel.

  Louis had lost no time in recasting his front page to announce B.J.’s refugee series, and folks were dying to know the details. B.J. was an AABJ success story. He had joined the group as a freshman journalism student and done freelance work for the Atlanta Voice before he graduated. He maintained his membership while he was in West Africa and for several years after that. As his byline began to appear in more and more national and international publications, AABJ’s membership kept up with his work with the pride of an extended circle of uncles and aunts.

  When he dropped o
ut of sight several years ago, they assumed the rumor about the book was true and didn’t worry until they realized several years had gone by and no book had appeared. Their excitement over Louis’s announcement was heightened by their relief that B.J. was still a part of their small but intensely loyal family. The fact that he had resurfaced on the staff of tonight’s honoree only served to underscore their good judgment in recognizing the Sentinel with their Pioneers Award.

  Handsome in his tux, and sporting a perfect bow tie, Louis was shaking hands, sharing hugs, and accepting congratulations with equal aplomb. Wisely forgoing another attempt at Amelia’s wrap-and-drape concoction, I had spruced up my long, navy blue, almost formal dress with my mother’s real pearls and let the stylist at Roots International twist my hair into a lovely cascade of braids that she pinned on top of my head like a crown.

  I felt glamorous and really happy for my friend. Louis, always Mr. Cool, was so excited when I went by to pick him up that he almost couldn’t stand still long enough for me to tie his tie. You’d never know it now as he leaned down to hug Miss Iona and whisper something in her ear that made her throw back her head and laugh out loud. Then he was shaking hands with Blue Hamilton, kissing Flora Lumumba, and hugging her husband, Hank. Behind them, I could see Precious and Kwame Hargrove on either side of a very pregnant Aretha, who was due any day now. Precious was shaking hands like a good politician, but Kwame was totally focused on guiding his wife to their table so she could sit down.

  From where I was standing, I was out of the flow of people to and from the bar and I could sip my wine and watch the crowd gathering. Amelia had admonished me to observe and remember all details, serious and superficial, so I could give her a complete report when she got back. I was on my j-o-b.

  Sam spotted me at the same time I saw him entering the ballroom. He raised a hand in greeting and headed my way. There was an attractive young woman on his arm who looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her.