“I think they must have liked it that way-at least the parents did,” I
acknowledge.
“The old people probably thought being Chinese was better than being white, and maybe they were right. Some of them had worked for planters like the Taylor family. It didn’t take them long to find out that the richest and presumably most educated whites in the South had only one thing in mind and that was to exploit them as laborers as thoroughly and as long as possible. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Taylors had Chinese working for them after the Civil War.”
So painstakingly it makes my eyes twitch, Amy thickens her lashes. I’m surprised she doesn’t blind herself with all that gook she puts on them.
“I’ve never heard you obsess the way you have about this Taylor family,” she says evenly.
“You’ve never mentioned them before.”
I lean back against the door sill and fold my arms against my chest.
That may be true, but the resentment was always there. And until now, I had never been in a position to do anything about it. When I got back to sleep after having gotten up to go to the bathroom after two, I had dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. All I can remember now is that she had looked sad.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I say, realizing how much I have traditionally tried to cope with parts of my past by minimizing its bleakness. However, with Sarah, now a history major at the University (this month anyway), becoming curious about the South and her ancestry,
it is increasingly difficult to do. I realize I have never told my daughter how our family was treated by the county’s leading citizens.
Why? Embarrassment, I guess. We had seemed so weak and helpless. I didn’t want her to think of her grandparents that way. When we had gone over to Bear Creek in November, she had wanted to know if they were racists. Of course, I had told her. In those times we all were.
What I should have told her was that we were nothing like the Taylors.
We hadn’t owned slaves, we hadn’t cheated people out of their property or land. We hadn’t been hypocrites.
I notice Amy looking at me in the mirror. She says, “God, Gideon. You seemed to go into a trance.”
Feeling foolish, I force a smile, but it looks weak as it comes back to me in the mirror. Am I really still handsome as Angela said? Except for the gut and my bald spot, I haven’t aged too badly. I pooch out my bottom lip with my tongue, noticing the beginning of a fever blister on my lip. Damn. Why now in the middle of winter?
If doctors got paid for what they actually cured, they’d go broke.
“It was an interesting visit,” I temporize.
“What were you thinking about?” Amy asks, coolly appraising her own face. She is performing this ritual nude. I wonder if Angela does. My mother would be horrified at this scene. She was almost laughably modest. Even my sister Marty said she had never seen our mother without
clothes.
“Just the past,” I say vaguely. Actually, I was thinking of the way Angela looked just before I kissed her.
“How can your client afford to pay you?” Amy asks, now blotting her lips.
“Didn’t you say he worked at a barbecue place?”
Without lipstick, her mouth is a hair too small.
Painted, it looks bigger. Not Julia Roberts size, but wide enough.
“He and his wife had saved a few thousand for a house,” I say.
“I’ll lose money on this case, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Anything is better than nothing.” Sex is no problem between us, but I suspect money would be. From past comments I know Amy is struggling in her law practice. Domestic relations cases, her bread and butter, are usually a sinkhole unless your clients are rich. They eat up all your time and then don’t pay, or you can’t collect your fee. Dan is the expert in the divorce accounts receivable business. Women going through a divorce usually have less money than criminals. A former assistant prosecuting attorney, Amy, unfortunately, hates representing crooks. I get awfully fed up, too, but as a former public defender, defense work comes more naturally to me. It wouldn’t entirely surprise me if Amy wanted to stay home and tend to a couple of yard apes. Her genetic clock is ticking down and that’s probably where this pressure is coming from.
Poor women. All this progress and they still can’t figure out how to have it all. Men aren’t much better off. After nearly half a century on this earth, I’m still paying for the one kid I’ve got.
Ten minutes later Amy and I kiss each other goodbye as if we were a longtime married couple parting to go to our respective jobs.
I start my day with a win when the plaintiff in my Municipal Court hearing is a no-show. When I hit the office, the mail has already arrived. There amid the collection of professional garbage I find an envelope with my daughter’s handwriting, an event which usually signals some internal struggle being waged. I take it back to my office and close the door and sit down, prepared for the latest installment.
February 25
Dear Dad, I sent this letter to the office, because I didn’t know whether you were in your new house. I know you’re thinking: Oh, God, what is wrong with her now, since I hardly ever write. Nothing really is, but I just wanted to describe to you some things that have been happening to me, and when I tell you on the phone sometimes I never can say what I’m trying to.
After I got back to school in January, I joined an AIDS Care team through one of the churches in Fayetteville. A friend of mine whose brother died of AIDS got me interested, and I went through the training on the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s birthday. What we are is kind of a support group for people with AIDS, or PWAS as they are called. We do all kinds of stuff for the two assigned to our team, and some things
I’m discovering I’m not very good at doing.
These guys really are dying, even though one of them is still doing okay.
“Larry” (we’re supposed to protect their anonymity) is sort of our healthy one. He was diagnosed two years ago and actually is able to work as a salesman for a computer company up here. We just kind of hang out together sometimes. I like him. He’s funny and says the wildest things. He says he is most scared of going blind or getting Kaposi’s Sarcoma which he says will make him look hideous. In lots of ways, he’s a neat guy. He does a lot of things for guys who are sick even though he can be pretty hard on them.
He has a real strong work ethic and tries to live a healthy lifestyle (he says some of these other people have given up and just do whatever they want-I guess I would, too). Even though he’s gay, I couldn’t tell it just by looking at him. I think he feels real ambivalent about his sexuality. Also, he’s kind of religious. I don’t really know him that well, but I’m getting to.
The other guy is “Luke,” and he is sick. Right now he is in the hospital and may not make it much longer. My friend Barbara (the girl who got me interested) is really amazing. She just goes in the hospital room and takes over. She feeds Luke (he hardly eats anything), washes him, even brushes his teeth. I can’t do that. I’m just too squeamish. I guess I’m afraid, too, even though I know I can’t catch AIDS that way.
It really makes me respect what Mom did. I can’t imagine being a nurse! Mom did all that stuff all day long until almost the month she died!
I think something is wrong with me. I’m just too big a baby. Barbara says I’ll get used to it, but I don’t think so. All I’m good for is talking. Maybe I’ll be a lawyer after all!
Mainly, when I visit Luke, I read to him though I don’t know how much he listens. He likes me to read the paper, especially Dave Barry. He sort of goes in and out. Dad, he’s only 27! I can’t imagine how I would cope with knowing I was dying so young and in such a terrible way. Poor Mom. She wasn’t even forty, was she? I know we’ve talked about this some, but didn’t she feel terribly cheated? I know she wanted to see me grow up. You’d think I’d learn a lot from all this, but the only thing I’ve learned is to try to appreciate every moment, no matter how boring it seems. Of course, I don’t!