The Phoenix of Birmingham

The Phoenix of Birmingham

         She knew if she were murdered, there would be too many suspects for the crime ever to be solved.  The suspects would literally line up nut-to-butt, bend around the corner, travel two blocks up and down each side of the road and loop around the courthouse.

         If she committed suicide and still had the smoking gun in her hand with a perfectly handwritten note, they would probably still launch an investigation.  They’d figure if she used a gun, someone must have loaded it for her. If she fell from a window, the odds were just too good that somebody was around to push her.  A noose around her neck was likely a frame-up too ridiculous to be believed. 

         Suicide was out of the question.  No one would allow it nor would vengeance stand idly by.  That’s just the way things were.  The world revolved around the bitch making the most noise.

         She sat down and looked at herself in the mirror.  From just the right angle, the scars were just below the neckline of her blouse and practically invisible.  No decent person would look very closely, and the hateful, well…they wouldn’t care.  So the façade was nearly intact.

         Sometimes people made some of the meanest comments.  She’d heard them all.  The latest insanity was a left-handed swipe that gushed about how remarkable it was that a poor black girl from her neck of the woods, where a girl couldn’t ride in the front of the bus, should rise up, in spite of all odds to the contrary, and run a chemical company with all the testosterone of a man.  What balderdash!  She had more testosterone than a man.

         Her only regret in life, if it could be called regret, was that she had to keep her business situated in the south.  Her business demanded the south.  She hated the south.  She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t.  She hated the temperature, the humidity.  She hated the accents.  She hated the people, all the people, especially the ones claiming the same gene pool.  She didn’t care that much for all the people who rode shot-gun with her on the bus or populated the lunch counters where blond bland people refused to serve them.  She never got into marching, but hey, a girl couldn’t do everything.  Dogs scared the willies out of her.

         She had to keep them around though, especially the ones related to her.  They were all employed in various gaudily visible positions with titles that meant absolutely nothing except that they were related to and or held in the good graces of the boss.  They were all a bunch of parasites, bloodsuckers, every single one of them.  They were like fleas crawling about her back, all picking, all chewing, all sucking, all trying to burrow under her skin, looking for gold or a free pass.  She knew none of it was free.  It was just business.  Her father had taught her that.  She even did business with some of the very people who had slammed the doors in her father’s face while trying to get her mother to do their laundry and raise their children.  She tried not to hold a grudge as it tried to get under her skin.

         Ah, but there was the rub.  Her skin was too thick, her hide too tough, and nothing entered her body without a doctor’s order, a needle or a personal desire.  But, it also never got out.  She’d raced miles uphill on her treadmill, she’d climbed millions of stairs on her stair-master, and she’d rowed miles of imaginary treacherous salty surf before sunrise.  Not all in one day, mind you, that would be silly, but the firmness in her skin and the firmness of her resolve all culminated from hard workouts and a few choice chemicals.  Some called them vitamins.  She preferred to call them what they were, and none of them were naturally made.  Her body was beyond nature.

         Many would look at her neck scar the few times she allowed it, not that she let them know she saw them, and wonder how she could allow such a botched-up plastic surgery job.  She let them think it.  Their vicious thoughts, which she seemed to hear, only crystallized her rage, and she knew that was much easier to deal with than trying to fathom people pitying her.  Pity would have caused her to go positively ballistic and someone might get harmed. 

         So she let the rumors continue about her inability to get a reputable surgeon to touch her because they feared lawsuits.  Let them imagine that she had a need to have the accidental scar removed.  If somebody had done what all these people said they had done, she wouldn’t sue them.  She’d have them murdered, sautéed, and fed to their children.  She’d read about how Idi Amin had done that.  She thought it was cool.  She looked forward to the opportunity to pound and season the flesh.  She’d do it personally.  Lawsuits!  Humph!  Lawsuits were just for entertainment.  The yellow rags needed something to scribble about.  She figured she kept two or three of them in print all by herself.

         Today, she had to get dressed and go to his funeral.  It took all her resolve to do it, but she couldn’t risk not going.  Those headlines might cost her two or three percentage points on Wall Street, and she had her business to think about.  People’s jobs depended upon her, even if she did transfer them at a whim.  As badly as they spoke of her, she couldn’t be accused of firing any of them.  But transfer, well a gal had to do what a gal had to do.  It was her small way of encouraging racial harmony and the freeing of slave mentality; whites to the south, blacks to the north.  Maybe she could milk this funeral for some added advantage somewhere down the line.  Actually, coming to the funeral was the one request her sister made.  She was going all along.  She needn’t have been asked.

         Some days, like today, she wished she could just fade into the background or really go out into public and say and express everything she felt in her heart.  Could the world survive it?  She doubted it.  People thought she felt the world revolved around her.  She didn’t think it, she knew it.  At least, the small world they lived in revolved around her.  All they had to do was ask who paid the rent.

         They all thought he was this wonderful man.  Only she knew he was the reason for all the calamities in her life.  Well, a couple bankers knew it too, but they didn’t count.  They’d been bought and sold so many times she was sure they’d forgotten what they knew.  She let them spend their time counting her money.  Beyond that, there was nothing she could do.

         She paused as she looked in the mirror.  She should have known it was too good to be true.  The old fart was stepping aside and letting his daughter, the one with a PhD in chemistry and the new MBA degree from Harvard, come down and run his highly successful soap business; a business in a world of men.  He seemed to forget she was a black woman from the south who went to Harvard.  When she got back, the first meeting was with the auditors, the next with the tax people, and the next with the banks and the creditors.  The business crumbled in her lap while he sat around and bemoaned letting a pathetic little woman run his little baby into the ground.

         It took all of her skills and most of her ovaries to resurrect the business.  She changed its entire focus and left little evidence he had ever existed.  She kept his name on the letterhead, but not on her heart.  She washed away those stains just as she had when she was a little girl.

         She dropped her brush.  All in a rush, she remembered why she hated him so much and how much energy it took.  Usually, she only took him in pieces.  He’d forced her to do things she never thought possible; earn a degree in chemistry and then survive Harvard.  He’d taught her to volunteer for pain.  He may not have known it, but he did.

         The first time her twin confided in her about the sidelong glances and the queasiness it engendered, she knew it was true, even though her sister swore he remembered nothing when sober.  It was like a sock in the gut.  She didn’t know what to do with the information.  She knew she had to keep the secret.  That was apparent.  Besides, whom could she tell? 

         It took her a while to figure why he went after her sister and not her.  He liked those weak ones, even if he didn’t know it.  Men with small egos often had to prey on those they felt entitled to gorge themselves upon.  She wondered if he knew her brother was weak, and if so, what scars did he hide? 

         Her mother was weak, or so he thought.  She thought it took a lot of strength to end one’s life because one felt abandoned and alone.  A weakling might hang around and wait to be rediscovered, but a strong person would choose not to participate, even if that non-participation demanded a mortal sacrifice. 

         The night their house burned down, they found her mother’s shoes on side of the well.  Since no one had the guts to peer into the well or to fish out her body, they simply filled in the well with dirt and sand, completing a tomb.  Their father built a larger house and extended the driveway over the well. She, her brother and her sister fantasized for a while that their mother had clawed her way out and ran away, but as the years wore on, death became more palatable than simple abandonment.

         With no one left to protect them or tell them apart, she realized what she had to do, what only she could do.  She switched roles with her sister.  She became the weak one and her sister became the strong, if only when others were watching.  She managed to be around when he drank and just as he was drawn to drink, he was drawn to her.  She repeatedly allowed the draw.  She convinced herself that her sister’s survival depended upon it.  She knew she could survive any visual assault and any minor grope.  She just hoped that’s all it ever was.

         It went on for months before he tried to go beyond placing her hand on his crotch and she let him figure she wasn’t weak, she could say no.  He was so enraged, he tried to cut her throat with a wine glass, but he was too drunk.  When her sister hit him in the head with the lamp, he simply slumped to the floor.  As they contemplated cutting his throat, the kerosene lamp fell off the side-table and into his lap.  Evidently he awoke and put out the fire, as the two of them had fled upstairs.

         The next morning he had a headache, but couldn’t remember anything from the night before. He never asked about the missing lamp, her bandaged neck, or the scars that replaced the bandages. For a while, he hobbled and winced when he walked, but he never asked about that either.  Maybe he assumed a connection.  The interesting part was he never approached either of them again.  All of a sudden, there were no weak children.  Two women had risen from the ashes.

         She picked up her brush and looked at herself as she brushed.  Tears were not good for make-up.  She made a note for herself that they needed to fix that in their next facial foundation line.  If they could fix the smeared mascara, they could fix this.  If she said to fix it, it would be fixed.  It was guaranteed, or somebody’s position would become immediately available. 

         She and her sister sat together with their brother in the first pew.  The fact that this church had survived several fire-bombings over the century did not elude her.  Her father had even donated some funds for its rebirth, not that he frequently attended church.  She didn’t either, but her sister and her brother often did.  Churches and this one in particular, always made her somewhat uncomfortable, as though she couldn’t blend in. Even if they had wanted to trade identities with her sister, the scars on her neck easily identified her.  She knew modesty and shame should propel her to cover up, but she couldn’t today.  She knew what they represented and so did her sister and brother.  It seemed an appropriate send-off.

         The funeral was elaborate and bland in that people only showed up because they felt obliged.  The others that showed up came to be seen.  It was an event.  They paid the appropriate condolences to the family members, but it was clear once their photos were taken, they couldn’t wait to clear out.  She couldn’t wait to leave, herself.  She felt smothered and in need of a drink; a desire she rarely indulged.

         When they tossed his body into the ground and a clump of dirt finally cascaded off the coffin, she turned, not bothering to shake the dirt from her palms, and sprinted to the limousine with her siblings close on her tail.  At that point, she didn’t care.  If they wanted pictures of her in a full-out sprint in three-inch spikes, hair flying and knees exposed, good for them.  They could have it.  She’d had enough.  She knew fairly soon they would realize she hadn’t shed a tear to smear her semi-veiled face.  They’d probably think she was on tranquilizers, and as she thought about it, tranquil seemed a good idea.

         She and her sister had just settled into the back seat with their brother cradled on the other side when they heard a tap on the window.  She thought to herself, “what fool would tap on the tinted windows of a funeral limousine?”  Rather than ponder too deeply, she watched blandly as her sister powered down the window.  Standing in front of them was an elderly woman, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.  She smiled, opened the door and got in, sitting across from her.  They knew who she was by her weathered hands.  Her age could not hide the scars.  “My God, she’s risen from the well.”